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The Quest of Truth 


C^rtur^-S^rnuittB 

BEING A STUDY OF VARIOUS 
FIELDS OF CHRISTIAN TRUTH 


• qV^ 

SrARTHUR COOK, Litt.D.,D.D. 



Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham 
New York: Eaton and Mains 


C 6^2 


COPTBIOHT, 1912, BY 
JSNNmaS AND Gbaham 


Geatefullt Dedicated to 

“Qllircc 

WHO HAVE BEEN THE INSPIRATION OF MY 
LIFE AND THINKING. 

(Seorge ^fasn ^orlitett ^arker ^okixte, 

'^txuzsx dtjarlton ^lack. 


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Prefatory 

The fields of Christian truth are broad and 
fertile. Myriad voices teach the great lessons 
of life, speak of God, and pay their homage 
to His Christ. 

Truth is everywhere. The fundamentals 
of Christianity are imbedded in the nature 
of things. They have of necessity found 
manifold expression. Christian essentials 
are not to be regarded as resting upon any 
arbitrary dictum or claim. Eevelation has 
its roots in the nature of God, and is a con- 
comitant of the moral order in the universe 
and in life. 

Truth is a unity. Its content, wherever 
embodied or however expressed, helps to 
make clear the essential scheme of things. 

Christ is the Truth. All truth is unified 
in and illuminated by Him. He is the key- 
stone of the arch, but every supporting 
column has value, the worth of which is 
often little recognized. 

7 


PEEFATORY 


It is the purpose of these chapters to 
suggest something of the richness, from the 
religious standpoint, of several important 
fields of truth, and to utilize these treasures 
of truth in making broad and secure the 
foundations for a rational basis of faith. 

The themes treated have been given both 
as sermons and as lectures. The enthusiasm 
and appreciation with which they have been 
received prompts the hope that the printed 
volume may be of unusual interest and 
profit. 

The ‘‘Acknowledgment and Bibliogra- 
phy’’ at the close of each chapter will be 
found of service in the further pursuit of 
these subjects, while at the same time recog- 
nizing various sources of indebtedness. 
Many of the books were read several years 
ago, so that more specific acknowledgment 
could not well be made. While the method 
employed is general, it is intended to be 
inclusive and to make full acknowledgment. 

S. Aethue Cook. 

Bed Wing, Minn, 


8 


Contents 


PAGEl 

Nature’s Testimony Concerning God, - 13 

Man in the Moral Court of History, 49 
Christian Teaching in Art, - - - 79 

Music and the Religious Life, - - 127 

The Religious Element in Literature, 171 
The Bible, God’s Depository of Truth, 231 


Christ Jesus, the Truth Incarnate, 


277 


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Nature’s Testimony Concerning God 


^ ‘ Canst thou by searching find out God % canst thou 
find out the Almighty unto perfection? 

It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? 

deeper than hell; what canst thou know? 

The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and 
broader than the sea/' 


—Job 11:7-9. 


NATUEE’S testimony; conceening 

GOD 


The fool says in his heart, ‘‘There is no 
God/’ To him Nature is silent. Perchance 
his difficulty is like that of the politician, 
of whom Emerson tells, who had been rav- 
ing at an abolition meeting in Boston. An 
old lady said to him, “Honey, I would tell 
you something, but I see you ain’t got nothin’ 
to carry it home in.” 

Nevertheless, throughout all the ages, the 
diligent inquiry of the earnest soul has been, 
“Canst thou by searching find out God! 
canst thou find out the Almighty unto per- 
fection!” Whittier’s hymn reveals the 
heart’s serious questioning: 

“0, watchers of the stars of night 

Who breathe their fire, as we the air — 
Suns, thunders, stars, and rays of light, 

0 ! say, is He — the Eternal there ! 

Bend there around His awful throne 
The seraph’s glance, the angel’s knee! 

Or are thy inmost depths His own, 

0 wild and mighty sea! 

13 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

“0 Thou who bid’st the torrent flow, 

Who lendest wings unto the wind — 

Mover of all things; where art Thou? 

0, whither shall I go to find 
The secret of Thy resting-place? 

Is there no holy wing for me, 

That, soaring, I may search the space 
Of highest heaven for Thee? 

‘‘0, would I were as free to rise 

As leaves of Autumn’s whirlwind borne — 
The arrowy light of sunset skies. 

Or sound, or ray, or star of morn 
Which melts in heaven at twilight’s close. 

Or ought which soars unchecked and free 
Through earth and heaven ; that I might lose 
Myself in finding Thee !” 

Has Nature a testimony concerning God? 
If so, what is her message, and what are the 
facts regarding it, that determine its place 
and value? 

To the first question the poet Keble an- 
swers : 

‘‘He opens Nature’s Book, 

And on His glorious Gospel bids them look.” 

But, alas! many look in vain. Having 
eyes, they see not. This is partly because 
14 


NATUEE’S TESTIMONY 


of Nature’s concealments, which often are 
full as much in evidence as her revelations. 
Nature never wears her heart upon her 
sleeve.” Her treasures 6f wealth and truth 
are only found by diligent seekers. For ages 
man is cold, yet Nature quietly holds fast 
the secret of her rich coal beds hidden snugly 
away in her bosom beneath the soil. Nature 
has power in wind and water, but waits for 
man to discover their use. It has been sug- 
gested that we are still uncertain whether 
a vegetable or a meat diet makes the ruddier 
countenance ; and whether a log cabin and 
an ox or a college and a gymnasium can do 
more for each young Lincoln. 

So also Nature’s testimony concerning 
God lies half hidden, at times seems a bit 
obscure, and may even admit of some di- 
versity in interpretation. Huxley, though an 
earnest student of nature, once said that but 
for that unknown Athenian who had antici- 
pated his thought, he should have erected 
somewhere in London an altar with this in- 
scription, ‘‘To the unknown God.” 

That Nature’s testimony is in part con- 
cealed, or even that it is inadequate, argues 
15 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

neither its non-existence nor its lack of value. 
If these are facts, they simply indicate the 
limitations of our field and the manner and 
difficulties of our study. John Burroughs, 
who has been called ^^a high priest in the 
temple of the cosmos,^’ says that one secret 
of success in observing nature is the capacity 
to take a hint. A hair may show where a 
lion is hid. We must value bits and shreds, 
and put this and that together. 

Another reason why nature is a closed 
book to many is to be found in themselves. 
A man, seeing the flood of light bursting 
from the moon rising behind the clouds, ex- 
claimed, “Ah, man, isn’t it like the foot- 
lights!’^ In all the splendor of the starry 
sky he only saw a cheap resemblance to some 
theater. A tailor, in the presence of the 
majesty of Niagara, said, with indifference, 
‘ ‘ Good place to sponge a coat I ” So we stain 
creation with our stinginess and our moods 
until the whole vastness and glory of it be- 
comes a mere echo of our pettiness and folly. 
How different such a man as Dr. Little! 
Standing admiringly before a picture of 
16 


NATUEE^S TESTIMONY 

storm and rain, it seemed so real to Tiim 
that he said alond to himself, ‘‘But if you 
had seen that in nature, more beautiful, you 
would have dragged your petty self across 
the landscape and dreaded catching cold.’' 
Oarlyle, visiting the home of the artist Mil- 
lias, asked, “Has paint done all this?” The 
artist smiled and answered, “It has, Mr. 
Carlyle.” Carlyle replied, “All I have to 
say is, there are more fools in the world 
than I thought there were.” Not to the Car- 
lyles of the world, but to the delicate souls 
having the eye of the artist, the constructive 
faculty of the poet, and the vision of the 
prophetic seer, does Nature tell her story. 
These are the folk who can climb upon some 
mountain slope, projecting over the water’s 
edge and covered with flowers, and hear God 
speak. Burns burst into wondrous song at 
the sight of a simple daisy, and Linnaeus 
wept over the crude, common flower of the 
field. Luther at Wartburg looks out in the 
middle of the night and sees “the great vault 
of immensity, long flights of clouds sailing 
through it — dumb, gaunt, huge. ” “ Who sup- 

2 17 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 


ports all that!’’ lie asks. Hone ever saw the 
pillars of it, yet it is supported. In answer 
to his own question he exclaims, ‘‘God sup- 
ports it!’’ One evening at sunset he is in 
the garden at Wittenberg and sees a little 
bird perched for the night upon a leafy 
bough. Above that little bird, says Luther, 
are the stars and deep heaven of worlds; 
yet it has folded its little wings and gone 
trustfully to rest as if in its own home. In 
the home and the birdie’s sleep he sees the 
provision of the Maker, and cries aloud, 
“Will He not care for you, 0 ye of little 
faith ! ’ ’ Consider the lilies, and the birds of 
the air — observe nature, and learn the les- 
son of trust. Even the worm so awakened 
the interest of Darwin that he wrote a volume 
about it, and has been styled “the poet lau- 
reate of the worm. ’ ’ 

Does nature bear witness unto Godf It 
is largely a question of the personal factor. 
The higher and more fully rounded our de- 
velopment, the greater teacher nature be- 
comes to us. She speaks, but only nature’s 
lover hears. 


18 


NATURE TESTIMONY 


“To him who in the love of Nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
A various language ; for his gayer hours 
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile 
And eloquence of beauty ; and she glides 
Into his darker musings with a mild 
And healing sympathy that steals away 
Their sharpness ere he is aware/’ — Bryant. 

Fortunate and happy are they whose vi- 
sion leads them to say with Mrs. Browning, 

“Earth’s crowned with heaven 
And every common bush afire with God.” 

For it is 

“Only he who sees takes off his shoes; 

The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.” 

Nature is a revelation of God. There is 
an argument in the majestic sweep of the 
planets, in the refreshing breath of the 
wind, and in the sweet whisper of the flowers. 
Out of a consciousness of this fact came 
Tennyson’s charming line: 

“Flower in the crannied wall, 

I pluck you out of the crannies; — 

Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 

19 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 


Little flower — ^but if I could understand 
"What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is. ’’ 

The tool explains the workman, the in- 
stitution the statesman, the home the people 
that made it ; the universe explains God. All 
the objects in nature are the letters in the 
Infinite alphabet that spell out the riches 
of the character and deeds of God. The phys- 
icist, the biologist, the astronomer, and the 
poet in reverent tones have spoken unto 
God and said, ‘^0, Father, where art 
ThouT^ And out of rock and wave, out of 
herb and flower, has come a voice answer- 
ing, ‘‘God is hereP’ The earth cries unto 
the heaven, God is here! while the heaven 
reverberates with the sound and echoes back 
the refrain, God is here ! About us on every 
hand we find Him, who 

“Lives through all life, extends through all extent. 
Spreads undivided, operates unspent.’’ 

Divine action in nature is the ever-present 
and unchanging fact. The changing factor 
is our knowledge of the manner of this action. 
John Fiske has aptly said: “In no case 
20 


NATURE’S TESTIMONY 


whatever can science nse the words force or 
coMse except as metaphorically descriptive 
of some observed or observable sequence of 
phenomena. The business of science is sim- 
ply to ascertain in what manner phenomena 
co-exist with each other or follow each other, 
and the only kind of explanation with which 
it can properly deal is that which refers 
one set of phenomena to another set. And 
consequently at no imaginable future time, 
so long as the essential conditions of human 
thinking are maintained, can science even 
attempt to substitute the action of any other 
power for the direct action of Deity.” 

Note how perfectly this verdict of the 
great scholar and author coincides with the 
rhapsody of the psalmist: 

“Bless the Lord, 0 my soul. 

O Lord, my God, Thou art very great ; 

Thou art clothed with honor and majesty; 

Who coverest Thyself with light as with a gar- 
ment; 

Who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain; 

Who layeth the beams of His chambers in the 
waters ; 

Who maketh the clouds His chariot ; 

21 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

Who walketh upon the wings of the wind; 

Who maketh winds His messengers; 

Flames of fire His ministers ; 

Who laid the foundations of the earth, 

That it should not be moved forever. 

Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a 
garment ; 

The waters stood above the mountains. 

At Thy rebuke they fled ; 

At the voice of Thy thunder they hasted away 
(The mountains rose, the valleys sank down) 
Unto the place which Thou hadst founded for 
them. 

Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass 
over; 

That they turn not again to cover the earth. 

He sendeth forth springs into the valleys ; 

They run among the hills ; 

They give drink to every beast of the field ; 

The wild asses quench their thirst. 

By them the fowls of the heaven have their 
habitation ; 

They sing among the branches. 

He watereth the mountains from His chambers; 
The earth is filled with the fruit of His works. ^ ’ 

God is to nature the constitutive condi- 
tion of a rational system. A study of na- 
ture unfolds the contents of the idea and 
thought of God. Nature is symbolic; it is 
22 


NATUEE^S TESTIMONY 


a system which expresses thought. The 
thought and energy that it expresses is evi- 
dently divine, while at the same time it mani- 
fests principles which are akin to the laws 
of the soul. The significance of objects 
must be apprehended by thought, and for 
this to be possible they must be inherently 
intelligible. If nature is susceptible of be- 
ing known, then the laws of things must be 
identical vdth the laws of thought. This 
essential intelligibility of nature and iden- 
tity with the principles of the mind argues 
not only a common Cause or Source, but a 
rational Being. Nature as the expression of 
God’s thought can be rethought by man. 

Wordsworth has the idea in his immor- 
tal ode, sees the eye of God in the sunset 
cloud, and finds great thoughts in the least 
of the flowers: 

‘‘And 0, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, 
Forbode not any severing of our loves ! 

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might ; 

I only have relinquished one delight 
To live beneath your more habitual sway. 

I love the Brooks which down their channels fret. 
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they ; 

23 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

The innocent brightness of a new-born day 
Is lovely yet; 

The clouds that gather round the setting sun 
Do take a sober coloring from an eye 
That hath kept watch o^er man’s mortality; 
Another race hath been, and other palms are won. 
Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, 

To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.” 

If nature is the embodiment of God’s 
thought, and if God is present as the abid- 
ing Source of the world and the ground of 
all its movements, then we would expect to 
find law, order, symmetry, design, and adap- 
tation; and all of these promotive of the in- 
terests of life. Or, to reverse our thought, 
if these latter facts and conditions are found 
to prevail, they are God-compelling consider- 
ations ; signs of God in the universe, suggest- 
ing a Superhuman Thinker. 

Can we look upon the world and upon life 
and still feel that things are as they are 
merely by accident? The Scottish philoso- 
pher Beattie had his little child sow flower- 
seeds in such manner that when they grew 
24 


NATURE TESTIMONY 


they spelled out the hoy’s name. Try as 
best he might, he could not persuade the 
child that this particular arrangement, plan, 
and adaptation merely happened. From 
the evident intention and thought back of 
this coincident the father led the child to 
the larger Christian conception of the uni- 
verse. 

If we seek the aid of the microscope, it 
reveals to us tiny cells of nutrient matter 
shaped into various tissues and possessed of 
life. Science declares that there is no cell 
except from a cell, no life except from life. 
Matter and its laws do not give us life with- 
out God. But let its origin he what it may, 
it behaves according to law in the building 
of tissues, in the evident fulfillment of spe- 
cific design. Structureless living matter and 
physical law can not build any sort of tis- 
sues without God, much less the intricate 
and delicately designed structures of the 
human body. 

A noted scientist passes from agnosticism 
to faith through the performing of some sim- 
ple experiments with amoeba, and with tun- 
ing forks that had electrical tests for the 
25 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

measuring of musical notes. From the for- 
mer he draws the conclusion that behind and 
in the physical body there is a spiritual body 
or power thaf builds it; from the latter he 
concludes that all the planets and suns are 
vibrating the thought of a World Mind, who 
is the Author of a world beauty, a world 
music, and a world truth. 

The matter of instinct also is decidedly 
suggestive of God. Numerous experiments 
have proven beyond question that instinct 
is not the intelligence of the animal itself, 
developed by its own experience. For ex- 
ample, a chicken blindfolded from the mo- 
ment it comes out of the egg, kept entirely 
away from the sound of the mother, and fed 
without the use of its sight, will immediately 
upon its release go in almost a straight line 
to the mother hen in answer to her call, a 
sound never heard before, and will pick up 
the tiny insects with unerring certainty in 
the very first eiffort. Whence the intelli- 
gence in the instinctive act*? The spider, 
unable to lift a heavy object from the floor 
to the ceiling by direct pull upon the web 
it has let down, drops a second web, comes 
26 


NATURE’S TESTIMONY 


down and fastens it to the first a little above 
the object, returns to its ceiling and pulls 
successfully, having established the indirect 
or pendulum movement. Who taught the 
spider to use as accurately as a trained 
mathematician a fundamental law of me- 
chanics? Farther back than instinct is law, 
and still farther back is the Law-Giver. 

Even more suggestive of God than in- 
stinct is the human mind itself. The mind, 
not as the result of reasoning, but as the 
expression of its own needs and nature, 
forms the conception of the supernatural. 
‘‘As a result of some sensations we posit 
a world of things; as the result of others 
we posit a world of persons ; as a result of 
our total experience we posit God.” There 
is a certain psychological necessity, inherent 
in the nature of human intelligence, that 
manifests itself in a universal and persistent 
sense and idea of the Divine. We do not 
make it, nor deduce it through the logical 
faculty, but it grows out of life itself, and 
as the totality of experience it is more com- 
pelling than logic. The crowning master- 
piece of nature, the human being, demands 
27 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

God, can not escape Him, and refuses to get 
on without Him. 

Upon every hand we see an evident fit- 
ness in things, serving admirably the pur- 
poses of life. Certain articles are good for 
food, the eye seems adapted for seeing, the 
brain can be used in connection with the 
process of thinking, the mind itself provides 
for and demands God. Are we to conclude 
that all this is a happy chance, of which we 
may as well take advantage? Is the mani- 
fest fitness we observe the embodiment and 
expression of a divine plan, existing for a 
purpose, or is it a mere coincidence to be 
utilized if we wish? 

Dr. John, who has made valuable con- 
tribution to this line of argument, eloquently 
sums up his findings in these words: ‘‘We 
find God everywhere; in the rainbow’s arch 
and the cataract’s roar; in the snowflake’s 
crystal and the dewdrop ’s sheen ; in the rest- 
less sea and the azure sky; in the rose’s blush 
and the lily’s fragrance; in the butterfly’s 
wing and the fish’s fin; in the nightingale’s 
throat and the eagle’s eye; in the spider’s 
web and the honeybee’s cell; in the lion’s 
28 


NATUEE’S TESTIMONY 


courage and the turtledove’s peace; in 
childhood’s faith and motherhood’s love; and 
— 0 vision of visions! — we shall see Him in 
the unspeakable glory of the human soul, 
which alone is akin to the Infinite Planner, 
and which is itself, so far as we can see in 
nature, the greatest thought of the Infinite 
Thinker. ’ ’ 

The ultimate view of the universe is the 
religious view. ‘‘Nature is for industry, art, 
science, and for something more. She is the 
condition of physical life and one of the 
conditions of the highest life, and she may 
be something for herself. But these are 
stages in the journey toward her ultimate 
meaning; they do not constitute the jour- 
ney’s end. Nature has something to say for 
God — ^not a great deal, to be sure — but, 
nevertheless, an authentic and significant ut- 
terance. She is not her own ; she belongs to 
another; of her Owner she is a manifesta- 
tion, and her final meaning is found in the 
terms of His life. The universe has its pri- 
mary meaning as a value for God. In the 
fact that it is for Him lies its distinction, 
its permanence, its hope. All phenomenal 
29 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 


existence is filled and fixed with the Eternal 
Presence; and its original meaning is its 
worth for His infinite wisdom and love/’ 
‘‘For of Him and through Him and unto Him 
are all things/’ 

In keeping with the religious view of na- 
ture, nature herself is ofttimes in reverent 
mood. She speaks a various language, and 
in her own way seeks to worship the King 
all-glorious above. 

“The Ocean looketh up to Heaven, 

As ’t were a living thing, 

The homage of its waves is given 
In ceaseless worshiping. 

“They kneel upon the sloping sand, 

As bends the human knee, 

A beautiful and tireless band. 

The Priesthood of the sea! 

“They pour the glittering treasures out, 

Which in the deep have birth. 

And chant their awful hymns about 
The advancing hills of earth. 

“The green earth sends its incense up 
From every mountain shrine. 

From every flower and dewy cup 
That greeteth the sunshine. 

30 


NATUEE’S TESTIMONY 


‘^The mists are lifted from the rills 
Like the white wings of prayer. 

They lean above the ancient hills 
As doing homage there. 

‘‘The forest tops are lowly cast 
O’er breezy hill and glen, 

As if a prayerful spirit passed 
On nature as on men. 

“The clouds weep o’er the fallen world 
E’en as repentant love; 

Ere to the blessed breeze unfurl’d, 

They fade in light above. 

“The sky is as a temple’s arch, 

The blue and wavy air 
Is glorious with the spirit-march 
Of messengers of prayer. 

“The gentle moon — the kindling sun — 

The many stars are given, 

As shrines to burn earth ’s incense on — 

The altar-fires of Heaven! 

HITTIER. 

It is quite natural that man in his mo- 
ments of anxiety and depression should turn 
to nature as to the temple of the Lord. Na- 
ture grants an uplift of solace to man in his 
cosmic moods and needs. When exhausted 
31 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

witli work, overwlielmed with sorrow, or 
baffled with temptation, men turn with eager- 
ness to nature, and a mountain becomes a 
friend scarcely less real than a person. And 
if such an one is in as worshipful a temper 
and attitude as nature herself, he will find 
God there. 

‘ ‘ God in His Heaven ’ ’ true ! 

But God’s in His Earth too ! 

The facts and friendship of nature, 
though inconclusive as proof and inadequate 
as a revelation, are a valuable witness, and 
in their testimony suggest many things. 
Basic to all the rest is abundant theistic in- 
dication. Hature, especially through science, 
has been helpful in many ways, particularly 
in our conception of God. We are told that 
a certain musician of the prince’s court 
played long, unnoticed, before the castle 
prison, until at last he poured forth a strain 
loved in youth by the prince. Then a token 
was dropped. So we have looked askance 
at science, unwilling to make our gift of rec- 
ognition, until at last we became quite sure 
that she is the handmaid of religion, deter- 
32 


NATURE’S TESTIMONY 

mined to play the note of reverent faith we 
loved in youth. Now we welcome science for 
the way in which she is making nature to 
proclaim God and His truth. The late un- 
pleasantness between science and religion 
was largely due to failure to keep two ques- 
tions distinct. The first question has to do 
with the way in which things come together, 
and the order in which events occur. This 
is the field of science. The second is causal, 
and is the province of revelation and reli- 
gion. While here we have two fields, separate 
and distinct, it is still true that each must 
supplement the other. The conscious need 
of the other, on the part of each, is cement- 
ing a lasting friendship between these erst- 
while foes. We are told that the Doges of 
Venice at certain seasons would symbolize 
the marriage of their city to the sea by drop- 
ping a ring into the waves. When science 
began to drop into truth’s treasury a word 
for God, it symbolized a future intimacy and 
union between these two great giants, de- 
signed for the service of men and the glory 
of God. 

Not only does nature’s testimony add 

3 33 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

generously to the theistic conclusion, but it 
gives some hints as to how we are to re- 
gard God. For example the following con- 
siderations are worth our while. An ordered 
nature must be animated by a great thought 
and guided by a great purpose. Hence the 
necessity for Personal Intelligence. The 
mind will not allow things to exist at random. 
Not only does nature need a constitutive in- 
telligence, but the demand of the mind makes 
urgent the comprehending of all things un- 
der some law-giving plan. Why the system 
is as it is, implies purpose. Nature is a form 
of working for the expression and realiza- 
tion of Living Will and Personal Intelligence. 
The unity of nature must have back of it the 
higher unity of its Author. The universal 
reign of law could proceed from no God save 
a law-giving and law-abiding God. ‘‘Nature 
reveals the bounty and infinite variety in the 
nature of God. The passing seasons, with 
the majesty of summer and the sanctity of 
winter, represent the canvas upon which He 
portrays His passing thoughts. The tropic 
flowers, so luxuriant upon the plains of 
Africa as to clog the baggage wagons of 
34 


NATUEE’S TESTIMONY 


Stanley, represent the richness of heanty 
with which God embroiders the lap of spring. 
The mountains with their cloud-capped 
towers, the high hills all aged with snow, the 
hillsides waving with wheat, represent the 
infinite variety and wealth of God’s mind and 
heart. ’ ’ 

Nature is a preacher of righteousness 
and suggests a holy God of moral love. She 
is against the lawless. Nature warns against 
the folly of sin and teaches the wisdom of 
right living. She makes the way of the trans- 
gressor hard. Evil thoughts she brands 
upon the face as marks of disapproval and 
of shame. She has only the aching head 
and the throbbing brow for the excesses of 
riotous living. She arrays herself in se- 
verity against the sinner. To him she is 
‘^brutal as tyranny, and merciless as death.” 
The plains of the universe are sloped to the 
advantage of righteousness. Kant, standing 
under ^ ‘ the polished dome, in which the lamps 
of God did bum, ’ ’ saw a vision. He thought 
that nature broke the silence in the voice of 
conscience. Then he saw the letter ‘‘o,” 
in the word ought,” enlarge into a great 
35 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 


circle, becoming ever larger, until it seemed 
to include tbe whole universe. 

But when all is said it is not enough. 
Even though partial to nature, we must con- 
fess her limitations. In photographing the 
Matterhorn, in the Switzerland Alps, it is 
necessary, on account of its size, to take the 
picture in sections. The genius of God is 
such that each red rose, each golden cloud, 
each fact of life, may help us to see Him; 
and yet the glimpse is only partial. Is there 
in nature such a revelation as is necessary 
for the moral person, to enable him to begin 
and to progress in the religious process of 
his life! Science and nature deal too largely 
with the physical and the material to take 
us all the way. We must get over into the 
realm of the moral and the spiritual for the 
completer truth, and even for the interpre- 
tation of such truth as we have. If we grant 
a Divine Spirit of the universe, nature can 
not possibly be the ultimate word to man. 

The history of the race gives abundant 
proof that the light of nature is not sufficient. 
Tell us, ye fire-worshipers of the Orient, 
cutting and mutilating yourselves until the 
36 


NATUEE^S TESTIMONY 


quivering flesh is hacked and raw, is nature 
all? What say you, ye cannibals of Borneo, 
of a few years ago, gnawing the roasted flesh 
from human bones ? Nature has always been 
yours. Answer, ye mother tossing your babe 
in the name of religion into the Ganges; or 
ye women of China with your feet cramped 
and deformed into hoofs! Nature, however 
beautiful and rich in meaning, does not pour 
the necessary light into the midnight dark- 
ness of a sinful soul. 

For the Christian also, nature, as a rev- 
elation, is inadequate and even misleading. 
Though she ‘‘never did betray the heart that 
loved her,’’ she is at times so manifestly lack- 
ing in equity as to seem often to strike the 
wrong man. It appears as if nature and her 
laws were engines to crush out human hope 
and life. Then all this talk of nature, law, 
force, and invariable sequence seem like the 
tempting prattle of Satan persuading to be- 
lief in a religion of absolute despair. It is 
no easy matter for the sensitive soul to har- 
monize his moral ideal with the brutal facts 
of the universe. The problem of the dark 
side of nature puts to the test our belief in 
37 


THE QUEST OF THUTH 

the goodness of God. We cry, More light! 
Nor do we cry in vain. Eevelation permits 
ns to look into the face of the personal God, 
who makes His love known with overwhelm- 
ing certainty. We look for God in the face 
of Jesns Christ and discover the spiritual 
purpose of a moral universe in the love of 
God and in the sacrifice of Jesus. 

The final meaning of nature and the char- 
acter of ultimate reality are given us in 
Christ. What sort of a mind is behind the 
outward world? Was John Stuart Mill right 
in bringing an indictment of cruelty against 
nature for her refusal to explain her mys- 
teries, and in speaking of God as a nameless, 
concealed being, whose face is not human- 
ized to the lineaments of love? Not if nature 
is interpreted with the added light of Eeve- 
lation. For the mind that lies behind all 
things is in reality the reason and heart of 
Christ. The God of nature is the Christlike 
God, but in nature we see Him only in part. 
Science herself is asking for the larger vision 
and is turning her inquiring gaze toward the 
more complete revelation. Eomanes, once an 
agnostic, says in his last book, ^‘Science is 
38 


NATUEE’S TESTIMONY 


moving witli all the force of a tidal wave 
toward faith in Jesus Christ as the world’s 
Savior.” In Christ we find the God who is 
love. ‘‘We look upon the worlds hung in 
the firmament, and in the background we 
read, God is power. We look at their ma- 
jestic movements, as they march through 
their appointed rounds, and we read, God is 
majesty. We look at their infinite complex- 
ity, yet beautiful simplicity, and we read, 
God is wisdom. We look at their laws that 
never fail, and we read, God is truth. We 
look at nature’s provision for our well-being 
and happiness, and we read, God is good- 
ness. But we look on the face of Jesus 
Christ, and we read, God is love.” 

Shall we then reject nature because of 
her limitations? Certainly not! for with her 
incalculable power upon life — physical, aes- 
thetic, intellectual, spiritual — she is not only 
a problem to the reason, but affords a testi- 
mony of no inconsiderable value to both rea- 
son and faith. 

‘‘For truth is not closed in the lids of a book, 

For its chainless soul is free; 


39 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

For truth surges into the open heart 
And into the willing eye, 

And streams from the breath of the steaming 
earth, 

And drops from the bending sky ; 

’T is not shut in a book, in a church, or a school, 
Nor cramped in the chains of a creed, 

But lives in the open air and the light 
For all men in their need ! 


’T is the Voice that comes from the gilded peaks. 
From the hills that shoulder the sky. 

Through the topless heights of a man^s own dreams. 
This Voice goes wandering by ; 

And who roams the earth with an open heart. 
With an ear attuned to hear. 

Will catch some broken chord of the sound 
Whenever the Voice comes near.” 

— Sam Walter Foss. 

God is everywhere, not only by His es- 
sential, invisible presence, but by His mani- 
festations of power and perfection. It is a 
mistake to presume that there are no splen- 
dors, outside of the Book, issuing from God’s 
works and providence ; and it is an even more 
fatal blunder to assume that the light of 
nature is either all that we have or need. 
40 


NATUEE’S TESTIMONY 


God intends that we should open our ears to 
the countless voices of wisdom and virtue, 
which, now in whispers, now in thunders, 
issue from the whole of nature and of life. 
He purposes too that we should hear His 
voice in special revelation and interpret His 
universe of truth in the illumination of Per- 
sonality, Supreme and Perfect. He who 
studies nothing hut nature will find confusion 
and darkness. He who studies nothing but 
the Bible does not study it to the greatest 
profit. Were nature rightly studied she 
would send man to his Bible and his knees. 
Were the Bible rightly read it would send 
him for instruction to every creature that 
God has made, and to every event wherein 
God is acting. God and God’s truth are 
everywhere. The Bible and Christ concen- 
trate the truth diffused through the universe 
and pour it upon mind and heart with solar 
luster. 

Our appreciation of nature will increase 
as in faithful pursuit of the quest of truth 
we come to see the place and value of her 
message for life and for God. Coleridge 
one morning before sunrise, in the Vale of 
41 


THE QUEST OF THUTH 

Chamonix, looks upon the towering form of 
Mt. Blanc, veiled by the clouds, and writes : 

‘‘0, dread and silent mount, I gazed on thee, 

Till thou, still present to the bodily sense. 
Didst vanish from my thought; entranced in 
prayer, 

I worshiped the Invisible alone. 

“Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth? 

Who filled thy countenance with rosy light? 

Who made thee parent of perpetual streams ? 

“And you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad, 
Who called you forth from night and utter 
death ? 

Prom dark and icy caverns called you forth, 
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks, 
Forever shattered and the same forever? 

Who gave you your invulnerable life. 

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your 

joy, ^ 

Unceasing thunder and eternal foam? 

And who commanded (and the silence came). 
Here let the billows stiffen and have rest ? 

“Ye ice-falls, ye that from the mountain’s brow 
Adown enormous ravines slope amain — 
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty Voice, 
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge. 
42 


NATUEE’S TESTIMONY 


‘Motionless torrents! silent cataracts! 

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven 
Beneath the keen full moon? Who hade the sun 
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living 
flowers 

Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? 

‘ God ! let the torrents, like a voice of nations. 
Answer ; and let the ice plains echo, God ! 

God! sing Ye meadow streams with gladsome 
voice ; 

Ye pine groves with your soft and soul-like 
sounds ; 

And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow, 
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God! 

‘Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost ! 

Ye wild goats, sporting round the eagle’s nest! 
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm ! 

Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! 
Ye signs and wonders of the elements ! 

Utter forth, God ! and fill the hills with praise ! 

‘Thou, too, dread mount, with thy sky-pointing 
peaks. 

Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard. 
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure 
serene 

Into the depths of clouds that veil thy breast — 
Thou, too, again, stupendous mountain! thou 
43 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 


That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low 
In adoration, upward from thy base. 
Slow-traveling with dim eyes suffused with tears,. 
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud. 

To rise before me, — rise, 0, ever rise ! 

Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth ! 
Thou kingly spirit, throned among the hills, 
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven, 
Great hierarch ! Tell thou the silent sky, 

And tell the stars; and tell yon rising sun, 
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God!’’ 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Signs of God in the World. — John. 

The Spiritual Basis of Man and Nature. — Half yard. 
Fundamentals of the Christian Religion. — Half- 
yard. 

The Idea of God. — FisJce. 

The Christian Faith. — Curtis. 

System of Christian Doctrine. — Sheldon. 

The Philosophy of the Christian Religion. — Fair- 
hairn. 

Christ in the Centuries. — Fairhairn. 

The New Epoch for Faith. — Gordon. 

The Christ of To-day. — Gordon. 

The Angel in the Flame. — Little. 

The Religious Instinct of Man. — Bristol. 

The Influence of Christ in Modern Life. — Hillis. 
Across the Continent of the Years. — Hillis. 

44 


NATUEE’S TESTIMONY 


Boston Monday Lectures (Orthodoxy). — Cook. 
Boston Monday Lectures (Biology). — Cook. 
Introduction to Psychological Theory. — Bowne. 
Metaphysics. — B own e . 

The Essence of Religion. — Bowne. 

The Will to Believe. — James. 

Christianity in the Nineteenth Century. — Lorimer. 
God^s Goodness and Severity. — Townsend. 

The Gospel for an Age of Doubt. — Yan Dyke. 

The Diviner Immanence. — McConnell. 

Beautiful Thoughts. — Gladstone. 

John Ruskin. — Montgomery. 

Heroes and Hero Worship. — Carlyle. 

Channing’s Works. 

Poems : Whittier. 

Tennyson. 

Coleridge. 

Keble. 

Wordsworth. 

Bryant. 

Mrs. Browning. 

Foss. 

The Psalmist. 


45 


Man in the Moral Court of History 


^‘Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and 
bow myself before the high God? Shall I come 
before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a 
year old ? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands 
of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? 
Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, 
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? 

He hath shewed thee, 0 man, what is good; 
and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do 
justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with 
thy God ?‘'^ Micah 6:6-8. 

‘‘Beware lest any man spoil you through philos- 
ophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, 
after the rudiments of the world, and not after 
Christ. For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of 
the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in 
Him. ’ ^ Colossians 2 ; 8-10. 


MAN IN THE MOEAL COUET OF 
HISTOEY 


The prophet Micah gives us a glimpse of 
man in history, working out the problems 
of his existence. Surely man in history is 
a fruitful source of suggestion for religious 
truth. 

Very much depends upon our viewpoint 
of history itself and upon how we study it. 
HegePs great ^‘Philosophy of History^’ is a 
development of the contention that the aim 
and scope of the civilizing process in history 
is the attainment of rational freedom, by 
which he means liberation from outward con- 
trol and from the inward slavery of lust and 
passion. We may readily grant that the 
whole historical process and the whole scope 
of historical event proclaims the need of 
such a freedom and tells the story of man^s 
failures and successes in his effort to at- 
tain it. 

Our method, in so far as we have occa- 

" 49 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

sion to study ttie field of history, will be in 
substantial accord with some utterances of 
Bishop McDowell in a sermon some years 
ago. He said the last thing to do with his- 
tory is to remember it. But there are three 
things to be done : first, see it with the imag- 
ination ; second, understand it ; third, resolu- 
tion in the face of the facts. 

The scope of history is much wider than 
our present concern. It has been suggested 
that a broad division of universal history 
might he made into astronomical, geological, 
and human history. Astronomical history 
began, say, a thousand million years ago, 
when God said, Light he,” and light was. 
Geological history began more recently, but 
perhaps several hundred million years ago. 
Human history began at a comparatively 
late date, with the appearance of man. It 
is within the province of this last division 
that our interest lies. 

But man as he is, and man as we think 
and feel he ought to be, present a radical 
contradiction. Whatever the primitive his- 
toric germ may have been, we have evidently 
come to a new point of departure through 
50 


MOEAL COUET OF HISTOEY 


the corrupted nature. Is the idea of a re- 
generated humanity, with the ideal of a per- 
fect man, germane and fundamental in the 
human race? If so, then what? 

Protagoras, a famous Greek philosopher, 
said, ‘‘Man is the measure of all things.’’ 
He therefore becomes the standard of judg- 
ment in all questions of the true, the beauti- 
ful and the good. We ask. What man? Plato 
replied, “Our God is the measure of all 
things.” We think of the whole Greek Pan- 
theon, and inquire. What God? Aristotle 
declared, “The perfect man is the measure 
of all things.” But where is the perfect 
man? Philosophy can not answer. Chris- 
tianity has answered. 

The ceaseless, undying hunger of the race 
has been for perfect manhood, with all that 
that implies. God is immanent in the moral 
nature of every man, and whoever perma- 
nently rejects or accepts the innermost voice 
of a God-illuminated conscience rejects or 
accepts the essential Christ. 

The idea of God is inherent in man’s 
moral ideal. Moral concern will not down, 
because its taproot is man’s intuitive sense 
51 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

of the Supernatural, to which he feels him- 
self to belong. God and the moral conscious- 
ness are facts of life. In the sense of God, 
in every rational being, there is a moral law 
asserting the difference between right and 
wrong. ^ ‘ The fundamental ideas of the moral 
nature are constitutive of the mind, and are 
as world- wide as the race.’’ Human nature, 
fundamentally moral, is the basis of a valid 
argument for God. Kant’s great service was 
in emphasizing the moral argument based 
on conscience and the moral order of the 
world. We are fundamentally dependent 
upon the moral consciousness even more 
than upon reason for knowing God. From the 
moral nature of man we infer the moral 
nature of man’s Maker. A moral order of 
human beings implies a moral universe; a 
moral race and a moral world necessitate a 
holy God. Man’s highest interests depend 
on a practical recognition of the moral prin- 
ciples of a world essentially moral. Hence 
peace and joy, the satisfied craving of the 
human heart, are only to be found in the 
consciousness of right and of duty done. 
The way of beatitude is 
52 


MORAL COURT OF HISTORY 


Where our duty’s task is wrought 
In unison with God’s great thought.” 

Man can not satisfy his own ideal. The 
larger moral task is impossible to him. The 
ethical demand is that he he loyal to his 
ideal through the entire reach of his per- 
sonal intention, and he is always conscious 
of falling short of absolute inner righteous- 
ness. He tries, but he can not organize him- 
self about his main intention, nor control the 
deeps of his individuality, or the basic long- 
ings of his nature. 

Man’s hope is in passing from morality 
to religion; to where the moral law itself 
becomes a friend through the power of a 
love that is the fulfilling of the law. The 
entrance to this new way is the sorrow for 
failure that leads to repentance. Man’s in- 
tuitive sense of the Supernatural, and his 
consciousness of utter failure to realize his 
moral ideal, lead not only to sorrow for 
failure, but ultimately to a personal bearing 
of faith toward the Supernatural, whose ap- 
proaches of love have inspired the personal 
leap into confidence.” Slow and tedious 


53 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 


was the road over which he traveled in reach- 
ing this final goal, but the certainty of his 
ultimate success was assured in the fact that 
man is fundamentally a religious being, and 
in the further fact of the nature and re- 
sources of God. 

The religious principle is in human na- 
ture. If we give attention to the reason we 
find that its earliest inquiry is into causes. 
The mere child breaks his toys to see what 
makes them go. Reason asks whence comes 
the order of the universe, and can not rest 
until it has ascended to the First Cause. The 
idea of God is thus involved in the primitive 
and most universal idea of reason and is 
one of its central principles. 

The affections declare our natures to be 
made for religion. We respond to the be- 
neficence and love of God because we feel the 
need of His love. The supreme appeal to 
human nature is in that favorite Scripture, 
^‘God so loved the world that He gave His 
only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth 
in Him should not perish, but have everlast- 
ing life. ’ ’ 


54 


MOEAL COUET OF HISTOEY 


‘‘When I survey the wondrous cross 
On which the Prince of Glory died, 

My richest gain I count but loss, 

And pour contempt on all my pride. 

“See, from His head, His hands. His feet. 
Sorrow and love flow mingled down ! 

Hid e’er such love and sorrow meet. 

Or thorns compose so rich a crown ? 

“Were the whole realm of nature mine. 

That were a present far too small ; 

Love so amazing, so divine. 

Demands my soul, my life, my all.” 

But the particular capacity in man with 
which history deals the most largely is con- 
science. Conscience asserts itself in the 
sense of sin and the claim of our moral 
nature for righteousness and retribution. 
Largely out of this fundamental fact in 
human life there has come man’s determined 
purpose to not only have a God, but to have 
His favor and forgiveness. Man will have 
a god of some kind because he must. Emer- 
son said, “The idea of God cleaves to the 
human constitution.” A little boy is flying 
his kite in the dusk of the evening. A man 
55 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

passing by, observing that the kite is no 
longer in sight, tries to tell the boy that it 
is lost. He answers, ^‘No; I feel it pull!’^ 
So man feels himself bound to God and must 
have His favor. 

Man knows God as the Source of his life, 
and seeks to worship. However primitive the 
expression of religious aspiration, it is still 
the Godward assertion of the essential self. 
The demand for the Infinite is the explana- 
tion of that crude form of reverence which 
expresses itself in the worship of nature in 
the boundlessness of its extent and power. 
Such a form of worship quite naturally takes 
possession of the mind when we are brought 
face to face with the great elemental forces 
of nature. Higher in the scale, but proceed- 
ing from the same human requirements, is 
the worship of the moral law in the absolute- 
ness of its authority, but regarded as em- 
bodied in some concrete form. The Christian 
religion so completely combines these two in- 
finites as to be able to take the place of both. 
^‘The God of Christianity is conceived at 
once as the infinite Power revealed in nature, 
56 


MORAL COURT OF HISTORY 


and as the source and end of the moral 
ideal.’’ Christianity alone is able to bring 
out with clearness that inspiring faith which 
enables men to see in the world outside of 
them the working out of their own moral as- 
pirations, and to beget the confidence that 
‘Hhe soul of the world is just.” Christianity 
is the highest testimonial to the persistent 
bearing of the human toward God, but all 
religion in greater or less degree exhibits 
the same fact. Glance backward across the 
continent of the years and read this deeper 
meaning of human history on every page. 
Behold the awe-inspiring ruins by the Nile! 
What are they but the fragments of old 
Egypt’s prayers f Look at the crumbling 
Parthenon, whither the multitudes tend. 
What is this old ruin but the shrine of the 
holiest religious conceptions of the Greeks! 
The dust of Nineveh and of Babylon is the 
pathetic inquiry after God of haughty and 
powerful races. Ashes of nations and races 
strew thick 

‘‘The great world’s altar stairs, 

That slope through darkness up to God.” 

57 


THE QUEST OF TKUTH 
Every nation at some time 
“Sprang to its feet, 

Stood erect, caught at God’s skirts, and prayed.” 

How often their blind efforts have seemed 
to fail, and they have perished, with their 
dying eyes turned toward the Unknown ! At 
best they found Deity only as a logical de- 
duction. But the heart’s cry ceases not. 
Man is a religious being ; he can not be other- 
wise; he must have God. 

Unbelief fails in its effort to get on with- 
out God. The atheist tries to find a substi- 
tute for the Christian’s God, thereby confess- 
ing that the God he will not recognize is 
there, and in his innermost heart he knows 
it. To avoid recognizing God, the Super- 
natural, and miracle, some worship Human- 
ity, others the Unknowable. Strauss deified 
the universe, and after ruthlessly demolish- 
ing all other deities, clung to the Universum, 
as he called it. The homage of the arch- 
skeptic to this chosen god of his old age is 
an unmistakable and pathetic witness to the 
need of the human heart and to the demands 
of our moral consciousness. 

58 


MOEAL COUET OF HISTOEY 

Eeview again those scenes of carnage and 
wild despair, when unreality, hunger, and 
guilt, running mad, stained the pages of 
French history with rivers of blood. The 
French have determined upon the destruc- 
tion of the Catholic religion. But almost im- 
mediately they decide upon a Feast of Eea- 
son. See them yonder adoring as Goddess 
of Eeason an impure woman, seated upon 
the high altar of Notre Dame! Still later, 
Catholicism being burned out, and Eeason- 
worship guillotined, they resort to what Car- 
lyle calls Mumbo- Jumbo, decreeing the exist- 
ence of the Supreme Being and the immor- 
tality of the soul, with Eobespierre not only 
legislator of a free people, but priest and 
prophet. They now bum Atheism and Com- 
pany, in pasteboard steeped in turpentine; 
but there is no grip upon the essential Chris- 
tian spirit, and the work of the guillotine con- 
tinues. Why did not France get on without 
God? In all her stmggles to substitute for 
the altars of the Lord, her conscious need 
saw only vanity and emptiness, while her 
moral life, dripping with the blood of the 
slain, with restless and oft-repeated accusa- 
59 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

tions ever cried, Guilty! guilty! Content- 
ment and joy depend upon man’s finding 
God, in whose spiritual likeness he is made, 
and for whose approval he yearns. 

The moral self demands the conscious 
favor of God. Conscience is the conscious- 
ness of God in the soul, and as such readily 
becomes our accuser. Self-justification 
ceases when man draws near to God. When 
man is brought to a vivid sense of the near- 
ness of the Holy Person the moral law 
reveals, he is at once brought into self-corn 
demnation and unrest on acount of his 
sins. 

Conscience fiays the guilty with merciless 
lash, and is unrelenting in its demands. 
Scourged by this fact. Lord Byron writes of 

‘‘That pang where more than madness lies! 

The worm that will not sleep and never dies, 
Thought of the gloomy day, and ghastly night. 
That dreads the darkness, and yet loathes the 
light ; 

That winds around and tears the quivering heart, 
Ah! wherefore not consume it and depart 


60 


MOEAL COURT OF HISTORY 


The poet Heraud exclaims: 

‘‘Will no remorse, will no decay, 

0 Memory, soothe thee into peace? 
When life is ebbing fast away 

Will not thy hungry vultures cease 
Ah no ! as weeds from fading free, 
Noxious and rank, yet verdantly. 
Twine round a ruined tower. 

So to the heart, untamed, will cling 
The memory of an evil thing 
In life’s departed hour; 

Green is the weed when gray the wall. 
And thistles rise while turrets fall.” 

“Yet open Memory’s book again; 

Turn o’er the lovelier pages now. 
And find that balm for present pain 
Which past enjoyment can bestow; 
Delusion all, and void of power! 

For e’en in thoughts serenest hour, 
When past delights are felt 
And memory shines on scenes of woe, 

’T is like the moonbeam on the snow. 
That gilds, but can not melt ; 

That throws a mocking luster o’er. 
But leaves it cheerless as before.” 

61 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 


Adam and Eve, conscious of the guilt of dis- 
obedience, try in vain to hide themselves 
from the presence of God. Cain becomes a 
vagabond, for he can not deafen his soul to 
the unwelcome voice; it is AbePs blood cry- 
ing out from the earth against him. Joseph’s 
brethren in Egypt become their own accusers, 
exclaiming in fear and terror, ‘‘We are 
verily guilty concerning our brother.” 
Herod, hearing reports of Christ, declares, 
‘It is John the Baptist; he is risen from the 
dead.” Shakespeare, in “Richard III,” 
makes false Clarence say: 

“My dream was lengthened after life; 

0, then began the tempest to my soul ! 

I passed, methought, the melancholy flood, 
With that grim ferryman which poets write 
of, 

Unto the kingdom of perpetual night. 

The first that there did greet my stranger soul 
Was my great father-in-law, renowned War- 
wick, 

Who cried aloud — ^What scourge for perjury 
Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence ? 
And so he vanished. Then came wandering by 
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair 


62 


MOEAL COUET OF HISTOEY 


Dabbled in blood, and he shrieked ont aloud, 
Clarence is come — false, fleeting, perjured 
Clarence — 

That stabbed me in the field of Tewkesbury ; 
Seize on him, furies, take him to your tor- 
ments ! 

With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends 
Environed me, and howled in mine ears 
Such hideous cries, that, with the very noise, 
I trembling waked, and for a season after 
Could not believe but that I was in hell; 
Such terrible impression made my dream. 


I have done these things 

That now give evidence against my soul. 


My conscience hath a thousand several tongues. 
And every tongue brings in a several tale. 
And every tale condemns me for a villain. 
Perjury, perjury in the highest degree; 
Murder, stern murder in the direst degree; 
All several sins, all used in each degree. 
Thronged to the bar, crying all — Guilty! 
Guilty! 

I shall despair. There is no creature loves me, 
And, if I die, no soul shall pity me. 

Nay, wherefore should they? Since I myself 
Find in myself no pity to myself.” 


63 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

Even heaven itself can not give peace 
while the gnilty soul mirrors a frown upon 
the face of God. Whitefield in 1740 on Bos- 
ton Common asked, ‘‘Would you be happy if 
you were in heaven, with your characters un- 
changed, remaining as they are at this mo- 
ment U’ All there is in literature, in heathen 
sacrifice, and in human endeavor, intended 
to propitiate the powers, and bring peace to 
the soul, answers. No. For harmonization 
of the soul with the infinite holiness of the 
moral law, with which it is environed and 
possessed, man must be delivered from the 
love and guilt of his sin. There is only one 
true philosophical answer to the question, 
“What must I do to be saved! It is, “Ac- 
quire now the similarity of moral likeness 
with God.’’ Ah! but just here lies the diffi- 
culty. 

Many a sinner, desiring to approach a 
holy God, confronts the greatest problem of 
his existence. “He hath shewed thee, 0 
man, what is good; and what doth the Lord 
require of thee, but to do justly, and to love 
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God!” 
Absolutely true I But man stands condemned 
64 


MOEAL COUET OF HISTOEY 


in the light of that standard. Here is the 
moral law reduced to simplicity of state- 
ment. In the presence of it guilty man con- 
tinues to ask, ‘‘Wherewith shall I come be- 
fore the Lord, and bow myself before the 
high God? Shall I come before Him with 
burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? 
Will the Lord he pleased with thousands of 
rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? 
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgres- 
sion, the fruit of my body for the sin of my 
soul?’’ There is little comfort in the moral 
law of the Old Testament, except as the pro- 
phetic message points the way to man’s re- 
lease from sin. 0, the tragedies of history, 
as man in the twilight of departed innocence 
has sought after God’s smile, awaiting the 
dawn of the soul’s larger hope, in the com- 
ing of the Christ! 

Christianity provides the way of for- 
giveness, issuing in a regenerated humanity, 
with the ideal of a perfect man. “Who, then, 
can forgive sins?” asked an ancient philoso- 
pher. “Perhaps the gods may,” some one 
ventured to answer. He replied, “I do not 
know whether it would be safe for the gods 
° 65 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

to forgive sin.’’ But in the divine plan of 
things, with regenerating power, a moral 
standard, and a quickened life, forgiveness 
is as fruitful as it is necessary. Through 
the channel of forgiveness and a conscious 
salvation there comes the answer to the 
heart’s longing. Dr. E. M. Taylor tells of 
visiting a pagan temple, where sixteen acres 
of ground were dedicated to the worship of 
pagan gods. What is that little pool in the 
center? It is called the Fountain of Life. 
In it has been placed a variety of things, 
supposed to possess saving properties. See 
the deluded suppliants dipping their fingers 
into it, touching in turn their hearts, tongues, 
and foreheads. Hundreds come and go, hut 
not once in a single case is the blank, hope- 
less look of despair raised from any one sad 
face. The very same day he goes to another 
community, where native Christians are hold- 
ing a camp-meeting. As he draws near he 
hears them singing in jubilant tones^ — 

“There is a fountain filled with blood, 

Drawn from Immanuel’s veins; 

And sinners, plunged beneath that flood, 
Lose all their guilty stains.” 

66 


MOEAL COURT OF HISTORY 


Behold the expression of joy and the mes- 
sage of peace on every conntenance! What 
washings, ceremonies, pilgrimages, and pen- 
ance has in all the ages failed to accomplish 
is become the glad experience of the seeking 
soul. The invisible realities of heaven have 
found a place in the consciousness of men. 
Sin and weakness no longer have power to 
shackle the innate ideal of the soul bom of 
the inward sense of God. Grand reality for 
the heathen world and for all mankind is this 
power of God unto salvation. 

‘ ‘ Thou, dying Lamb ! Thy precious blood 
Shall never lose its power, 

Till all the ransomed world of God 
Are saved to sin no more. ’ ’ 

Wliat, then, does history suggest as some 
of the requirements of a world religion, ne- 
cessitated by the moral ideal fundamental to 
humanity? It must be a universal, and not 
a local or national religion; for the need of 
the heart is everywhere the same. Bud- 
dhism, Brahminism, and even Judaism fail 
at this point. Christianity is the one who- 
soever will” religion, both in the generosity 
67 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

of its invitation and in its constitutional 
adaptation. 

It must be a spiritual religion, free from 
empty forms. The demand for reality must 
be maintained, in a vital consciousness of a 
sense of the divine, as a living presence suf- 
ficient unto every need. Christianity is in- 
herently spiritual, although historically it 
has not always been true to itself. The very 
essence of its genius is expressed in the 
Scripture, ‘‘God is a Spirit: and they that 
worship Him must worship Him in spirit 
and in truth. 

It must be a revealed religion. There 
are few lessons more clearly taught by man 
in the moral court of history than man’s ut- 
ter inability to so interpret himself and the 
world about him as to know God aright, apart 
from special revelation. “To the unknown 
God” represents the condensed wisdom of 
perhaps thirty great and original philoso- 
phies, the deduction of ten centuries of 
thought and speculation, the result of the 
long and brilliant history of Greek intellec- 
tualism. Jesus said, “He that hath seen Me, 
hath seen the Father.” And, “These are 
68 


MOEAL COURT OF HISTORY 


written, that ye might believe that Jesus is 
the Christ, the Son of Grod; and that believ- 
ing ye might have life through His name.’’ 

It must be a rational religion. It must 
not do violence to the truth inherent in 
human nature and thought. Addison said, 
^‘A religion, to be worth anything, should 
work well in three places: on deathbeds, 
in our highest moments of emotional illu- 
mination, and when we are keenest ration- 
ally.” Jesus said, “I am the Truth;” and 
truth is inherently and essentially rational. 
The truths of the Christian revelation and 
the Truth Incarnate in the person of Christ 
are not a contradiction, but the complement 
of the truth revealed in the nature, demands, 
and possibilities of human life and thought. 

It must be a moral religion. The moral 
ideal of human nature will never give man 
rest in a religion that is without ethics. The 
Hindu leaves his incantations to engage in 
most loathsome crime. The follower of Islam 
rushes from his knees to rapine and plunder. 
The Duke of Anjou, professedly Christian, 
outlines his nefarious plans to his followers, 
and as they roar with laughter he springs 
69 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

from liis bed and, kneeling there in his night- 
gown, he invokes the blessing of heaven npon 
his schemes. The nominal Christian leaves 
the sacramental altar and the holy atmos- 
phere of religious devotion to begin his work 
on the morrow with concessions to sin under 
the flimsy excuse that ^‘business is business.’’ 
The religious time-server argues, with his 
hand upon his purse, that it is politic and 
perhaps even necessary to regulate and en- 
dure evil rather than to exterminate or at 
least to flght it. Hence the prolonged life 
of the saloon and other forms of iniquity. 
But this manifest lack of that ethical ele- 
ment that is inseparably inherent in the truly 
spiritual, outrages the moral sense of human 
nature. Even the sinner cries out against 
the inconsistency that gives the lie to reli- 
gious profession. ‘Hf ye love Me, keep My 
commandments.” ‘‘Follow not that which 
is evil, but that which is good. He that doeth 
good is of God: but he that doeth evil hath 
not seen God.” These ethical standards of 
the gospel ring true to the deep demands of 
a man’s own soul. 

Not only must it be a moral religion, but 

70 


MOEAL COUET OF HISTOEY 

it must be a morality that is the fruit of 
religion. Such ethics as are possible with- 
out religion history declares a manifest and 
hopeless failure. There is some very good 
teaching in the precepts of the old sages, but 
morality is paralyzed for want of personal 
vitalization. Man has tried to be good under 
the influence of the moral law long enough 
to know that unless God in some special man- 
ner comes to his aid he is utterly lost. A 
German thinker explains his turning from 
infidelity to Christianity by saying that 
when he discovered his life in ruins he found 
that the supreme need of his soul was a 
Savior like Jesus. ‘‘Not by works of right- 
eousness which we have done, but according 
to His mercy He saved us, by the washing 
of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy 
Ghost; which He shed on us abundantly 
through Jesus Christ our Savior; that, be- 
ing justified by His grace, we should be made 
heirs according to the hope of eternal life.’’ 
And yet the righteous works must be there; 
they are inherent in the saved life as its in- 
evitable fruitage; for the faith that is with- 
out works is dead, and its absence can only 
71 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

indicate that we have not passed from death 
nnto life. 

It must be a religion capable of solving 
the problem of sin. A moral order in man 
and in the universe demands a holy God, 
who can not look upon sin with indifference. 
The moral law pronounces man a sinner and 
makes his approach to God one of fear. The 
religions of the world have failed to rise to 
the immensity of the need. Can Christianity 
solve the sin problem? In the Atonement 
love triumphs without the sacrifice of jus- 
tice. Mercy tempers the moral law, while 
fulfilling its utmost demands and making 
actual its hitherto impossible ideal. The 
pardoned sinner exclaims: 

“He owns me for His child, 

I can no longer fear ; 

With confidence I now draw nigh, 

And Father, Abba, Father cry.’’ 

Dare a pardoned sinner expect a potency 
and divine power in religion sufficient to keep 
him in favor with a holy God? Does a holy 
God expect what the moral law asserts — the 
idea of a regenerated humanity, with the 
72 


MOEAL COURT OF HISTORY 


ideal of a perfect man? Man in the moral 
court of history evidences the fact that no 
religion can become the world religion ex- 
cept it he sufficiently dynamic to he creative 
and regulative of a new life, both individual 
and collective. Christianity accepts the chal- 
lenge. J esus said, ^ ^ I am come that ye might 
have life, and that ye might have it more 
abundantly.’^ He taught us to pray and 
work for His Kingdom to come and for His 
will to be done by the individual in the con- 
stituting of the new social order. 

It must be the religion of the Incarnation, 
the lifting of man through the divine touch 
from above into that completeness that satis- 
fies the moral ideal inherent in human na- 
ture. The little boy yonder stretches himself 
to reach the latch that he may seek the pres- 
ence of his father, who is just starting for 
the battlefield to sacrifice for the safety and 
larger heritage of his child. Try as best he 
may, the little fellow can not span the dis- 
tance from his own lowly position up to the 
latch that opens to him the vision of father. 
Then his elder brother, tall and manly, reach- 
ing down, grasps the latch to the door, thus 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

filling out what is lacking of the child’s np- 
reach. So humanity has stood on tiptoe, 
reaching for the latch, to get a glimpse of 
God and to enjoy His approving smile. 
Through the centuries men have failed, un- 
til Christ, tall and mighty, with His shoul- 
ders under the throne of the Eternal, reach- 
ing His generous hand out of the heavens 
to supply what was short in the upreach of 
man, has unlocked the door and bids us be- 
hold in righteousness the Father’s face. 

At the noble cathedral of Strasburg there 
is a clock representing the planets in rela- 
tion to one another and to the sun. The 
hours register the movements of these plan- 
ets. Above the clock with its solar system 
is Christ and His apostles. The suggestion 
is that the order and movement of the uni- 
verse have their meaning in mankind, but 
in mankind expressed in its completeness in 
Jesus the Christ. The moral ideal is satis- 
fied in The Perfect Man, and “y^ com- 
plete in Him.” For each of us who make 
Him Savior and Lord there is, in the wide- 
ness of God’s mercy. 


74 


MOEAL COUET OF HISTOEY 


‘‘A heart in every thought renewed, 

And full of love divine ; 

Perfect, and right, and pure, and good, 

A copy, Lord, of Thine ! 

‘^Thy nature, gracious Lord, impart; 

Come quickly from above. 

Write Thy new name upon my heart, 

Thy new, best name of Love. ’ ’ 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Religious Instinct of Man. — Bristol. 
Religion in History and Modern Life. — Fairhairn. 
The Meaning of Life. — Cook. 

History of Religion. — Menzies. 

The Religions of the World and the World Reli- 
gion. — Warren. 

The Spiritual Basis of Man and Nature. — Half- 
yard. 

The Miraculous Element in the Gospels. — Bruce. 
The Christian Faith. — Curtis. 

The New Epoch for Faith. — Gordon. 

The Christ of To-day. — Gordon. 

Boston Monday Lectures (Transcendentalism). — 
Cook. 

Boston Monday Lectures (Occident). — Cook. 
Boston Monday Lectures (Biology). — Cook. 

The Call of To-day. — Lucas. 

The Young Man with a Program. — Eckman. 

75 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 


The Hungry Christ. — Young. 

God’s Goodness and Severity. — Townsend. 
Philosophy of History. — Hegel. 

The French Revolution. — Carlyle. 

The Influences of Christ in Modern Life. — Hillis. 
The Religions of China. — Legge. 

Confucianism and Taoism. — Douglas. 

Buddhism — Rhys-Davids. 

Islam — Stohart. 

Egyptian Religion. — Budge. 

The Christian Religion. — Fisher. 

Channing’s Works. 

The Open Door. 

Manual of Ethics. — Mackenzie. 

The Assurance of Faith. — Guth. 

The Greatest Things in Religion. — Antrim. 


76 


Christian Teaching in Art 


‘Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath 
shined. ’ ’ — ( Psalm 50:2.) 

‘God, who giveth us richly, all things to enjoy.’’ 
— (1 Timothy 6:17.) 


CHEISTIAN TEACHING IN AET 


‘‘When dreams depart, then it is time to die. 
Nay, thou art dead, when thy dear dreams depart. 
Even though thy ghost still haunts the crowded 
mart. 

Still with proud grace salutes the passer-by, 
Eeaps golden grain when the hot sun rides high. 
Sails the far seas with compass and with chart, 
Of the world ^s burden bears its wonted part 
Or faces doom with calm unwonted eye. 

For dreams, — they are the very breath of life ; 
The little leaven that informs the whole ; 

Wine of the gods, poured from the upper skies ; 
Manna from heaven, to nerve thee for thy strife. 
Fetter thy dreams, and hold them fast, 0 soul! 
[When they depart, it is thy-self that dies.’’ 

— Julia C. E. Dorr. 

Art is the embodiment of man’s dreams, 
tbe visible expression of the soul’s vision. 
It is the realization of a permanent idea in 
an ephemeral form. It is a means of giv- 
ing outward expression to an inward life. 
It is a glimpse of the eternal beauty bom 
79 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

into time. It is a gleam of the supernal 
splendor making radiant the habitations of 
earth. Art is man’s effort freely to repro- 
duce the ideal in truth and life. It is man’s 
attempt to incarnate a higher than natural 
beauty. It is an inspired human effort to 
make the creations of man’s hand, brain, and 
heart shine with 

‘‘The light that never was on land or sea.” 

The sources of inspiration from which 
worthy art springs are in the depths of the 
human heart, in the eternal realities of life, 
and in the dreams of loftiest vision. 

Presuming these to be statements of fact, 
we are led to further inquiry. Has art a 
vital and necessary significance for the re- 
ligious life! If so, what is the place and 
value of art as an expression and teacher of 
Christian truth? And, what is its message 
to the hearts of men? 

Art is properly and essentially religious. 
It is itself an excellence of human nature. 
Its soul is the desire for expression, and the 
beauty at which it aims is a part of the di- 


80 


CHEISTTAN TEACHING IN AET 


vine nature. It is a gift from above, orig- 
inal and creative. Many an artist stands 
before bis work and wonders how he created 
it, and mistrusts his power of reproducing it. 

Eeligion is art’s creative life, and art is 
religion’s effort at self-expression. One can 
scarcely understand the art of any country 
apart from its religion, nor the religion apart 
from its art. Art belongs with religion, de- 
clining and reviving with it. It is said that 
with man began religion, and with religion 
art. In religion art finds its loftiest themes, 
its holiest inspirations, and its most sympa- 
thetic encouragement. True, sometimes it 
has been degraded to ignoble uses of vice 
and superstition. Of some painters it may 
be said that mud shows in the bottom of 
their eyes. But all high art is the best ex- 
pression of a people’s inner heart and life, 
and finds in religion its very soul. The 
thing that made Egypt the mother of arts 
and that bade her build her pyramids and 
her temples was her religion. Art, both 
pagan and Christian, has everywhere lived, 
moved, and had its being in religion. This 
was possibly even more true of classical than 

6 81 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

of mediaeval art. Phidias helped to spiritual- 
ize the religion of Greece in a sense and to 
a degree that scarcely finds a counterpart in 
the work of Raphael for Italy. Greek art 
finds its interpretation in the idea that the 
beautiful is the most fit symbol and indeed 
the very synonym for the divine. The Greek 
artist, with this conception of things, be- 
came a worker upon Deity regarded as re- 
siding in human form. But if classic art is 
both religious and theological, the art of the 
Renaissance is also intensely religious. The 
nobility of the art of any country or period 
of time is measured by and is a measure of 
the religion that is its source and inspira- 
tion. The Christian spirit is vital and neces- 
sary to art at its best, and the degree to 
which art embodies and expresses this spirit 
determines the ratio of its significance for 
the religious life. 

Art, like religion, has its home in the 
ideal. It is man’s effort to get nearer the 
mind of God in His work. It is an effort to 
express the ideals of order, unity, balance, 
and harmony that we feel to exist in the 
handiwork of God. It is the inspired human 
82 


CHRISTIAN TEACHING IN ART 

searcli for the expression of the ideal. This 
ideal it conceives as moral, for the moral 
basis of life is necessary to give the founda- 
tion on which anything permanent in art 
can he securely built. It is an interesting 
fact that the development of art and the 
growth of ideals have ever gone side by side, 
keeping pace with each other. At times art 
has been tempted to sacrifice the ideal in the 
supposed interests of the real. But the true 
idealism is the real seen not merely as it is, 
but as it should be and as it shall be. Re- 
ality does not require that we paint every- 
thing that we see, but that we see everything 
that we paint. Art is not art unless it is the 
utterance of the ideal. Immoral art is a 
contradiction in terms. It is false to the 
best meaning of life, and with the best mean- 
ing of life art lives and dies. True art is 
created by life at its highest. It is not only 
a source of a very noble form of enjoyment, 
but its ideals inspire one with loftier views 
of life, while they minister to the service of 
mankind through their revelations of beauty. 
Art may have a market value, but the real 
measure of its value is its ministry to the 
83 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

higher moral, spiritual, and intellectual uses 
of life on the plane of the ideal. 

The ideal in art finds expression in the 
beautiful. Can it be that beauty and reli- 
gion are necessarily at variance with each 
other? Why did the God of all the earth 
select ‘‘Zion, the perfection of beauty, as 
the special place where His revealed glory 
was to shine forth? When He “giveth us 
richly all things to enjoy,” does He mean 
all things except beauty? God Himself is 
the author of all beauty. He by whom all 
things were made is the Master Painter. 

“Have you seen a Master Painter with a brush be- 
yond compare ? 

He has surely been about here with a touch sur- 
passing fair; 

For I see His masterpieces in the clover and the 
rose, 

And upon the robin’s plumage, and the hanging 
vines that close 

In upon my chamber window — 0, I know He has 
been there, 

And I want to see this Painter with His brush 
beyond compare. 


84 


CHEISTIAN TEACHING IN AET 


‘I know He must be lovely — and His thoughts are 
wondrous fine, 

For He puts the daintiest touches where I would 
the least of mine ; 

He has left some pretty sketches in the nooks out 
in the woods, 

And He scattered little daisies all along the 
dusty roads. 

I can tell you where He travels and that brush 
of His has gone. 

But I want to find this Painter, and I want to 
find Him soon. 

‘He must have hung His easel on a cloud up in 
the sky. 

On a recent summer evening, when a thunder 
storm went by ; 

For I saw a rainbow painted, midst its frown, 
and fiash, and roar. 

And the silenced earth, from shadows, seemed to 
gather hope once more; 

But I could not see the canvas or the Master’s 
moving hand. 

Yet I want to find this Painter, if I search in 
every land. 

‘He must have come quite near me, even passed 
within my door. 

For He mixed His charmed pigments on the 
cheeks my loved ones wore; 

85 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

And He must have dipped His brushes in a sun- 
beam entering near, 

And touched their eyes to loveliness, and all 
their smiles with cheer. 

iWhere does He get His colors, and how does He 
put them on? 

0 ! I must find this Painter, and I must find Him 
soon. 

‘‘There ’s such a magic in His working and such 
charm within His art. 

If He colors flowers and faces, is He master of 
the heart ? 

I have a canvas large to paint, ’t is all the world 
to me, 

And I want His brightest colors there for all 
eternity. 

If I can only see Him, just to look upon His face, 

I shall share with Him His beauty, masterpiece 
of saving grace.’’ 

— W . W. Shenk. 

‘ ^ The foundation of beauty in the world is 
the presence of God in it.” “Beauty on 
earth is not self-made, but sent hither by the 
hand and will of God.” The Maker of the 
world has crammed it with loveliness and 
beauty. The Maker of man has tempered 
his nature with artistic ideals like mto those 
86 


CHEISTIAN TEACHING IN ART 


by which He has fashioned the world. We 
appreciate the beantifiil because He has 
made us to share with Him His nature and 
ideals. The aesthetic in man is ‘a badge of 
royalty, for it reflects the image of Him who 
made us. ‘‘Both physical and moral beauty, 
in finite things and beings, are symbols and 
manifestations of Him who is the Author 
and Lover of beauty, and who is Himself the 
Infinite and Absolute Beauty.’’ 

The occasional hostility of religion to 
beauty is one of the tragic misfortunes in 
history, the result of gross misunderstand- 
ing. The Jews were forbidden to make any 
likeness of their Deity. The evident inten- 
tion was to separate, as far as possible, their 
worship from all art that had been associated 
with idol worship. It could hardly have 
meant that they were to discard all art: for 
the divinely given tabernacle, the ark of the 
covenant, und the golden cherubim were all 
artistic symbols of things spiritual; while 
the temple, with its religious sentiment and 
system, must be regarded as the perfection 
of Hebrew art, even though borrowed, as 
some contend, from the Phoenicians or Per- 
87 


THE QUEST OE TRUTH 

sians. The horror of image worship among 
Christians discouraged all visible represen- 
tation of Christ, while architecture and dec- 
oration were regarded as unfavorable to the 
spiritual life. Like the Hebrews, the Chris- 
tians could not distinguish between use and 
abuse, with the result that all the world is 
forever poorer. We see the beginnings of 
a change about the time of Constantine. 
Sculpture as well as painting begin to rap- 
idly develop, while architectural variation 
and Christian art in church building receive 
ever-increasing attention. But the time had 
past for authentic representation of many 
things we most want and need in the service 
of Christian truth and life. 

Beauty and religion belong together, but 
we must get past the beautiful things to the 
ideal beauty behind them. The very pres- 
ence of beauty in nature and art would lead 
us to believe that somewhere and for some 
Being there shines an unchanging splendor 
of beauty. Nor does the naturalistic theory 
of the universe give adequate explanation 
of the aesthetic. Thus does beauty itself be- 
come a witness to God. Beauty is not an 
88 


CHEISTIAN TEACHING IN AET 


accident of things; it pertains to their es- 
sence. Its banishment by man is only a proof 
of the moral disorder that disturbs the world. 
The power to appreciate the beautiful and 
the sublime is not only an accomplishment, 
but is a vital part of the development of 
character. The effect of beauty on character 
is refining and powerful. The sBsthetic na- 
ture is to be nourished not only for the 
pleasure it gives, but for its relation to life 
and to life’s achievement. 

Nor should we forget the value and stim- 
ulus of the aesthetic motive as an aid to re- 
ligious inspiration. It often plays a large 
part in determining one ’s choice of a Church 
or of a religion. The satisfaction of certain 
aesthetic needs contributes vastly to the 
power and hold of some Churches, especially 
on certain types of human nature. With 
people of this type even superiority in spir- 
itual profundity does not take the place of 
the aesthetic. The practical problem is to so 
relate the two that the aesthetic shall not sub- 
stitute for the deeply spiritual, but shall be 
subordinated to it, to the degree of greatest 
efficiency in a ministry of service to the inner 
89 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

life. ‘‘The sense of heanty is universal; it 
is not the religious sense any more than 
beauty is religion. But in beauty the revela- 
tion which God has made of Himself in na- 
ture and the Bible reinforces His appeal to 
the universal sense. Were the world less 
beautiful it might still be habitable and suf- 
ficient for the getting and spending on which 
so many lay waste their powers; had the 
Bible no book of Psalms, no story of Euth, 
no oracle of Isaiah, no parable of the Prod- 
igal Son, no eulogy of Love, it might still 
have been sufficient for doctrine, reproof, 
correction, and instruction in righteousness. 
But how abridged its human interest would 
have been! This is the great apology for 
beauty; it is not faith, nor an object of faith; 
but it is one of the mouths through which a 
hungering faith is fed, an avenue along 
which God may travel to reveal Himself to 
the inquiring soul.’^ 

Beauty is the earthly shadow of holiness, 
and holiness the spiritual form of beauty. 
Beauty was never intended to merely please 
and excite the sensuous. The holy mission 
of art is to bring about such contemplation 
90 


CHEISTIAN TEACHING IN AET 


of beauty, purity, and perfection as to create 
the love for these things in life and character. 
The noble Socrates in the dim religious light 
of his day understood this and exclaimed, 
pray Thee, 0 God, that I may be beautiful 
within.’’ But it is particularly in Christian 
art that the ideal of physical beauty is sub- 
ordinated to that of spiritual beauty. Art 
reaches the summit of its sublimity in the 
beauty of holiness. It can not be against 
the spiritual, for its life and ideal are here. 
Paul in Athens did not feel the art with 
which he was surrounded to be antagonistic 
to the spiritual ideal, but saw in art itself 
an unconscious worship that he sought to 
direct to the living God. He would make 
beauty one of God’s messengers to awaken 
interest in the highest things. 

Art is a doorway into the power and 
beauty of spiritual truth. The ministry of 
art in the realm of truth is vital and sig- 
nificant. The painter and the sculptor seek 
to express and interpret not only nature and 
life, but truth itself. Some one has said, 
‘‘The course of nature is the art of God.” 
jChanning makes beauty the garb of truth. 
91 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

Keats said, ^‘Beauty is truth; truth beauty.’’ 
Browning regards it as the way of speaking 
truth: 

‘Ht is the glory and good of art 
That art remains the one way possible 
Of speaking truth.’’ 

Art is a form of truth, an interpretation of 
the beautiful, an embodiment of ideals, a 
symbol of the spiritual and the divine. It 
is a human attempt to realize a universal 
language, bringing to the understanding of 
appreciative souls the deeper meaning of na- 
ture and the more delicate shades of human 
expression. It is one of the most efficient 
means for the communication of divine truth. 
Grod reveals Himself in inspired forms of 
beauty. If scientific principles tell their 
story, why should not beauty also give us a 
glimpse of the Divine Mind? Thus is our 
knowledge and love of God increased. One 
of the first objects of Christian art is to 
teach ; therefore truth, expressed in the beau- 
tiful and embodying the ideal, becomes a 
foremost aim of the artist. 

The sweetness, beauty, and truth of art 
92 


CHEISTIAN TEACHING IN AET 

are for life. Art is not for its own sake, 
but, as Browning said, ^^Art is for lovers 
sake;’’ that is, for tbe sake of humanity. 
The artist is a necessity; his beautiful cre- 
ation is of real worth. One can scarcely 
imagine a greater folly than that of those 
who would have the artist work in a slum 
or at manual labor. His task for practical 
life is the blending of the wholesome reveries 
of art with daily toil, not for himself alone, 
but for the millions of earth. Wordsworth’s 
sonnet on Milton applies to every true 
artist ; 

‘‘Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart; 
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the 
sea; 

Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, 

So didst thou travel on life’s common way, 

In cheerful godliness ; and yet thy heart 
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.” 

One of the purposes of art is to make 
life lovely. There is a constant tendency 
toward degradation from dullness and con- 
ventionalism and the mercenary spirit. The 
refining and uplifting influence of art on the 
commercial spirit and upon the home life is 
93 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

vast and far-reacliing. Beauty, like cleanli- 
ness, is very close to godliness. The presence 
of ugliness despoils life of its ideals and takes 
the keen edge off the moral sense. ‘‘Nature 
herself has such a prejudice against mere 
dirt that she covers with green any slope 
that will hold grass.’’ A few years ago, at 
horticultural societies in England, prizes 
were offered to villagers for the best efforts 
in cottage gardening. The result was that 
a great change came over the home life of 
the people. Instead of gardens filled with 
rank grass and weeds there could be seen 
flaming hollyhocks, blood-red roses, and pur- 
ple geraniums. A spirit of friendly rivalry 
and emulation was created, leading to im- 
provements in households and to habits of 
cleanliness and industry. So, too, the ideals 
of art are a constant inspiration. “A thing 
of beauty is a joy forever.” The common 
man, surrounded without by beauty and art, 
soon manifests a social unrest, manifest in 
a desire and effort to have his home brought 
into conformity with these ideals. The en- 
gravings and cromos seen in the homes of 
the poor may, if measured by the critical 
94 


CHEISTIAN TEACHING IN AET 


rales of art, be wretched daubs, but they 
at least show a longing and an inspiration 
after beauty, while their presence helps to 
produce a repose of mind and brings noth- 
ing with it but good. The loving manner in 
which children linger over pictures tells how 
deeply this feeling is implanted in the heart. 
Long before they can read their dawning 
powers are gradually being strengthened by 
these silent educators. 

The artistic and aesthetic quality in 
human nature needs to be cultivated in prac- 
tical life. The searching questions of Dr. 
Hyde are a good standard for self-measure- 
ment. ‘‘Do you leave things lying about 
wherever they happen to drop? Are you 
careless about your dress and personal ap- 
pearance? If a thing serves its purpose, do 
you never stop to ask whether it is beauti- 
ful or ugly? Do you take no pains to make 
your home or room attractive? Is there no 
picture, no music, no building or landscape 
that you love and. make some effort to see 
and enjoy? Then you are insensible to 
beauty. Do you assume an interest in beauty 
that you do not have? Do you put pma- 
95 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

mentation on yonr building because you 
think it ought to have some, without much 
caring what it is*? Do you buy pictures be- 
cause you suppose you ought to have some? 
Do you go to concerts because it is fashion- 
able? Do you wear fine clothes and have 
fine things because they are costly and showy, 
without much thought of whether you really 
get more enjoyment yourself, or give more 
to others, than you could with simple 
things? Then all your extravagant expend- 
iture is so much vulgar affectation. Do 
you disfigure the woods and fences, the fields 
by the side of road or railway, with fiaring 
advertisements? or, if others do, do you 
register no protest? Do you whittle your 
desk at school and write your initials or 
something worse in public places? Do you 
strew the picnic ground with boxes, papers, 
or fragments of food? Do you build hideous 
or ill-proportioned buildings in defiance of 
their effect on the skyline or the aspect of 
the street? Such defacement gives you a 
minus rank. Do you strive for neatness, 
fitness, beauty of texture, harmony of color, 
in the things you wear and have about you? 
96 


CHRISTIAN TEACHING IN ART 

Do you care for dainty serving as well as 
good cooking of your food? Do you count 
beauty of form as well as serviceableness of 
substance as essential in anything you make 
or buy? Do you sometimes buy a picture, 
a flower, a piece of furniture, just because 
it is beautiful and you like it? Then you 
have taste. Can you read aloud, or sing, 
or play some musical instrument, so as to 
give pleasure? Can you paint, or mold, or 
carve something which it is a joy to look 
upon? Can you build houses that both serve 
their purpose and at the same time please 
the eye? Can you express thought in words 
which have a music which carries them to 
the heart as well as commends them to the 
mind? Have you the skill which interprets 
to the hearer or beholder an artist’s master- 
piece? Then you are a productive artist. 
Can you build a house, or compose a song, 
or paint a picture, or write a play which is 
something more than a putting together of 
familiar situations? Can you create char- 
acters in Action or verse which have indi- 
viduality, and prove their power to live? 
Can you see something no one ever showed 
^ 97 


THE QUEST OF TKUTH 

you, and make others see it too'? Can you 
feel things you are not sure were ever felt 
before, and find for them so fine and fair 
a form that through it others shall come to 
share your feeling! Then you are a poet, 
a creative artist.’’ 

Art for the people is a wholesome cry. 
It was one of the great achievements of Bus- 
kin that he put art at the disposal of the 
poor. We see him bringing from the vari- 
ous countries of Europe the finest art-treas- 
ures, statues, paintings, tapestries, and 
mosaics, and scattering them among the 
workmen of the Sheffield factories. These 
models are soon reproduced in various forms 
to grace with beauty the homes of the poor. 
The value of public art for the masses, where 
the common people can visit without charge 
museums and art galleries, can hardly he 
overestimated. ‘^Art is essentially public, 
and not private, in its destination, and if 
it achieves its grandest success, must min- 
ister to society, and not to millionaires.” 
The Church will do well to seek to expand 
the religious aim and usefulness of art by 
bringing it to the whole community as a 
98 


CHRISTIAN TEACHING IN ART 

means of cultivating tlie grace of refinement 
and beauty. Tbe effort sbould be to raise 
the popular taste by the presentation of the 
best ideals in an intelligible form. “When 
the various objects represented, and espe- 
cially human history and the human frame, 
are no longer regarded as indifferent things, 
but as expressions of the human and divine 
spirit, as transfigured by their connection 
with the general life of humanity and by the 
indwelling of God, the accession of dignity 
and of interest which will come to all art- 
work will be very great, and will be at once 
stimulating and ennobling.’^ The painter 
and sculptor who makes nature and the 
human form more lovable and life more 
sweet and pure is a revealer to the people 
of the nature of God. If his purpose is true 
it will seek the largest and highest good to 
the greatest number. To fulfill this func- 
tion he must have his mind open to the ideal 
and his soul responsive to the divine. For 
while possibly the primary duty of art may 
not be to teach morals and religion to the 
multitudes, yet its great opportunity is in 
its religious mission to the masses. Its ap- 
99 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

peal being to tbe fundamental aesthetic sen- 
sation, relates it vitally to the universal emo- 
tions, while its ideals of beauty, appealing 
readily through the sense of sight, lead us 
to the very threshold of that beauty of holi- 
ness which is the glory of religion. 

Eecent art particularly has espoused the 
cause of the poor. Here we find the names 
of such artists as Millet, Josef Israels, and 
Jules Brenton. The effort has been to give 
an interpretation of, and to create enthusi- 
asm for, the common folk and the common 
life. The themes are the poor man, the peas- 
ant woman, the little waif, the humble cot- 
tage. This class of artists also have the 
real Christian spirit and the truly religious 
sentiment. Millet says of the Bible, in con- 
nection with his art, ‘H find in it all that 
I do.^’ Surely art devoted to the cause of 
such people as those among whom Christ 
went doing good, and finding its loving in- 
spiration in the Bible, must bear a message 
of truth and helpfulness. 

Great artists generally have been con- 
scious of the lofty character of their work, 
and undertaken it with religious devotion. 

100 


CHEISTIAN TEACHING IN ART 

It is said that when Benjamin West was a 
boy he was one day riding horseback with a 
neighbor boy who was apprenticed to a 
tailor. As he rode, the subject of a life- 
calling came up. Ben tried his best to per- 
suade his friend not to be a tailor, asserting 
that the one great thing in life was to be a 
painter. Being unable to persuade the boy, 
he leaped from the horse, exclaiming, will 
not ride with one willing to be a tailor.’’ 
The day came when, as president of the 
Royal Academy, he was a favorite of princes 
and kings. Holman Hunt believed the primal 
function of art to be the same as that of 
religion, the subduing of the evil, and the 
bringing in of the good. Frederic Shields’s 
creed is that art demands sanctification, and 
that purity of heart and mind are essential 
to the production of noble results. ‘VThe 
utmost for the highest,” was the motto of 
George Frederick Watts. He looked upon 
his gifts as a trust from God, to be used 
for the common good. Murillo is spoken of 
as a man ^‘with all the chords of his fine 
nature touched by the Holy Ghost.” When 
some one asked him why he lingered so 
101 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

long before Campana’s Descent from the 
Cross, he answered, am waiting till 
they bring the body of our blessed Lord 
down the ladder.” Michael Angelo spent 
seventeen years on St. Peter’s Cathedral, 
refusing all offers of pay, and merely seek- 
ing to glorify God in the achievements of his 
art. Fra Angelico, when preparing to paint, 
would enter his closet, seeking to expel every 
evil thought and unholy ambition, and then, 
with a face that shone with divine light, he 
would paint his angels and his seraphs. 
Whenever he painted the figure of the Christ 
it was with tearful eyes, and, kneeling, he 
would work on the picture as though he were 
at his devotions. Michael Angelo said of 
him, ‘‘Surely the good brother visited Para- 
dise and was allowed to choose his models 
there.” Men like these would quite agree 
with J ohn Euskin. Euskin, in the first 
volume of “Modern Painters,” says, “Art 
has for its business to praise God.” In the 
last volume he adds, “Art is the expression 
of delight in God’s work.” He had no sym- 
pathy with the doctrine of his French critics, 
“Art for art’s sake.” Tennyson said, “That 
102 


CHEISTIAN TEACHING IN AET 


is the way to hell/’ With this Euskin would 
agree. He labors in the realm of character, 
and with Puritan honesty makes art serve the 
purposes of religion. ‘‘Art was his text, but 
right living was his message.” He believed 
it to be the chief end of man to glorify God 
and enjoy Him forever, and he found here 
the purpose and meaning of both art and 
nature. The great artists have devoutly ap- 
proached their task, substantially from Eus- 
kin ’s viewpoint. 

The history of art is the biography of 
great artists. The work finds its measure in 
the man. All moral good in the last analysis 
is personal. “God is shaping the life of 
man to its diviner issues through contact 
with great persons, who by their moral be- 
ing have touched the skirts of God.” Su- 
preme Personality is the vehicle of highest 
good to the race. The value of any human 
service does not exceed the strength and re- 
sources of the human personality. We need 
not be surprised that back of the great pro- 
ductions of art we find great characters, for 
art at its best requires that the artist find 
his way to the secret of life at its best. Here 
103 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

alone is the vision splendid without which 
great art is impossible. Here, too, many a 
would-be artist has failed. 

The message of art is the gospel message. 
In visiting the great galleries of the world, 
one is impressed with the extent to which 
Bible history and Bible characters have fur- 
nished themes for the artist. Christ is the 
great central figure of the world’s art, but 
other features of the Bible history and teach- 
ing have received generous recognition. Of 
this latter we have an excellent illustration 
in modem art, in our own country, in Mr. 
Sargent’s decoration in the Boston Public 
Library. He represents the Prophets, ar- 
ranged in four groups of four and a central 
group of three. His creation worthily exalts 
the institution of prophecy as a chief means 
of keeping before the world right conceptions 
of God until the larger revelation in Christ. 
I have many times sat for hours before this 
series, and can quite agree with Dr. Stewart 
that the artist has succeeded in suggesting 
the following: ‘‘First, the divine urgency, 
which is indicated by the faces uplifted to 
God. Second, the unwelcome character of 
104 


CHRISTIAN TEACHING IN ART 


the work. Joel hides his face as from hor- 
ror; Ohadiah casts himself upon the ground 
in despair; Mioah leans his head upon his 
hand as if with a sense of the utter hope- 
lessness of his task. Third, the note of hope, 
marked clearly in the eager, expectant gaz- 
ing of Daniel, Ezekiel, Haggai, Malachi, and 
Zechariah.^^ 

Second only to that occupied by the Christ 
is the place given in art to the Madonna. 
First in interest is RaphaePs ‘‘Sistine Ma- 
donna” in the Dresden Gallery. It is said 
that when this great work was first brought 
to Dresden it was placed in the throne-room. 
The king, seeing that the throne was in the 
way of a proper placing of the picture, 
pushed the throne to one side, saying, ‘‘Make 
way for the immortal Raphael!” The “Sis- 
tine Madonna” is urged by the best critics 
to be the most beautiful picture in the world, 
and this despite the fact that the theme grew 
out of heated theological controversy. It is 
almost inconceivable that one should look 
upon this master-product of art without re- 
ceiving a spiritual blessing. The memory 
of the two faces of Yirgin and Child will live 
105 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

forever to sweeten all the springs of life. 
‘Hts loveliness is sacramental, and like the 
loveliness of the summer dawn. One looks, 
and his heart is in heaven.” ‘‘Its hold upon 
the human heart lies not more in its utter 
loveliness than in its imperishable sugges- 
tion of love.” The eyes of the cherubs, and 
even of the Madonna and Son, are directed 
toward the Unseen, Ineffable Presence to 
whom the beauty ascends like incense from 
the altars of God. It is said to have been 
RaphaePs idea to make the observer ask, 
“What are they looking at!” He is blind 
who can not see God behind the upward 
glance of matchless beauty. One seeks to 
turn away, only to be drawn back again by 
the resistless charm of 

“The Mother with the Child, 

Whose tender winning arts 
Have to His little arms beguiled 
So many wounded hearts.” 

— ^IVIatthew Arnold. 

At last one gets away, but the vision lives, 

‘ ^ The impress deepening with the gathering years, 
Like some rich song, once heard, the soul forever 
hears.” 


106 


CHEISTIAN TEACHING IN AET 


Of scarcely less interest is Murillo’s ‘im- 
maculate Conception,” to be found in the 
Louvre in Paris. This famous building is 
said to contain more “Eaphaels” than any 
other gallery in Europe, but I noticed that 
the crowd with eager, searching eyes pressed 
forward to 

“Where Murillo paints the crescent 
Underneath Madonna’s feet.” 

— J. P. Waller. 

This work doubtless attracts more attention 
than any other picture in the Louvre. It is 
regarded by art critics as one of the best 
products of the Spanish school and the glory 
of seventeenth century art. “It represents 
a slight, girlish figure, of the most delicate 
grace and beauty, soaring upward upon 
clouds, the moon under her feet, and around 
her groups of adoring and adorable cherubs. 
The face is luminous, the eyes drawn heaven- 
ward, the whole expression one of stainless 
innocence and holy rapture.” In its pres- 
ence there is inspired a sense of the beauty 
of holiness, and we are led to exclaim, 
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall 
107 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

see God/’ Art places us under no necessity 
of adopting certain theological beliefs con- 
cerning the Virgin. The great modem lesson 
is found in the fact that the Madonnas are 
so many tributes to the purity of noble wo- 
manhood and to the beauty and dignity of 
motherhood. 

In the Person of Christ Christian art 
has found its supreme task. The highest 
genius and the rarest talent have been de- 
voted to this high aim. Christ is drawing 
the art of the world to Himself. In the por- 
trayal of the ideal form and features of 
Christ we find both the greatest triumphs of 
art and its most manifest limitations. In 
every case we feel that, though the artist 
has made a picture that stirs men’s souls, 
he has only in part reproduced the Christ. 

The difficulties are many. The human 
face is itself a study of profound depth. 
‘‘Every human face is a veil that partly re- 
veals and partly conceals the soul. In its 
mysterious script there are hints of its hid- 
den past — ^hints of triumph and disaster, of 
far-reaching thoughts and hopes, of fathom- 
less depths of feeling and desire. In the 
108 


CHEISTIAN TEACHING IN AET 

face temperament, life, character, selfhood 
are more or less clearly depicted. The face 
is the highest expression of individuality ; of 
its essential nature; of its dominant trait, 
passion, or desire. It flashes out with vivid- 
ness the changing lights of the inner life.’^ 
Jenny Lind, when first meeting Daniel Web- 
ster, exclaimed, ‘ ^ I have seen a man. ’ ’ Thor- 
waldsen, the sculptor, said, in seeing Web- 
ster: ‘‘What majesty sits upon his brow! 
What a model for the head of Jupiter!’’ It 
is said that Leonardo da Vinci, in painting 
his masterpiece, “The Last Supper,” found 
very acceptable models for all of the heads 
except that of Christ. None had the beauty 
and celestial grace to express the Divinity 
Incarnate. Some say he left the place of the 
Christ in outline, for the devout imagination 
to supply. Milton speaks of the “human face 
divine.” Even this is beyond complete ex- 
pression in art, and how much more the 
divine face human. Artists have succeeded 
best with the child Christ and the dead 
Christ. “In Eaphaers ‘Madonna’ the ideal 
child charms us by the suggestion of eternal 
youth.” “In Eeubens’s ‘Descent from the 
109 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

Cross’ even death seems to pulsate with 
strange hints of coming victory.” But the 
living Christ, who can paint as he ought! — 
for ^‘the glory of God is in the face of Jesus 
Christ.” Artists have succeeded in bring- 
ing out vividly the perfect humanity of Jesus 
in all its pathos and reality. Many have 
failed even here in that they have depicted 
Him as frail in physical form and lacking 
in bodily beauty. Of all the artists perhaps 
Hoffman is clearest of this fault. But who 
can portray the spirit of Christ f The beauty 
of the suffering Savior is a spiritual beauty. 
We stand before the world’s best art in the 
reproduction of the Christ and say, ‘‘0, if 
we could see souls as we do bodies!” 

Another difficulty comes from the absence 
of any positive assurance as to how Christ 
really looked. It is claimed by some that 
the only authentic portrait of the Savior 
ever made was one cut on an emerald by 
Tiberius Caesar. Of the genuineness of this 
claim each must be his own judge. Taintor 
believes that the inspiration for all like- 
nesses of Christ goes back to an early por- 
trait in St. Callisto ’s Chapel, which he thinks 
110 


CHRISTIAN TEACHING IN ART 


to be a painting from memory by one who 
bad seen the Christ. At all events, explain 
it as we may, there is a constant element in 
the pictures of Christ. Every artist seems 
to have been haunted by the same vision. 

The artistic form has changed somewhat 
throughout the years. In the earlier period 
we have very largely the serial representa- 
tion for decoration of single buildings. In 
the sixteenth century special attention is 
given to single subjects. In more recent 
times there has been a return by such artists, 
for example, as Tissot to the former method. 

No attempt is here made to give a list 
that even approximates completeness. I 
only seek to suggest, as illustrations, some 
of the messages of a few of the masters, 
with the claim that these and many more are 
worthy. 

Our attention is drawn to the Christ by 
Rembrandt ’s celebrated etching ‘ ‘ Ecce 
Homo.’^ Behold the pathetic figure of the 
mangled Christ, His eyes uplifted. His head 
crowned with thorns. He is standing alone 
amid the raging crowd and contemptuous 
priests. Here is the ‘^Man of sorrows and 
111 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

acquainted with grief.’’ Who can look upon 
Him without a keener sense of the shame 
and guilt of sin, and a deeper love for the 
suffering Eedeemer! This is the Christ as 
He looks forward to the cross. But Eem- 
brandt also takes us beyond the shadow, 
where in the ineffable glory of the resurrec- 
tion life we can see the cross only in the 
backward look. In that great gallery, the 
Louvre in Paris, is one of the choicest treas- 
ures, Eembrandt’s ‘‘Supper at Emmaus.” 
Note the traces of torture still on the black- 
ened lips, and the great dark, gentle eyes 
widely opened; the bearing so impossible to 
describe, and the intense feeling of the face. 
But note also the halo of light enveloping 
Him in an indefinable glory ; and on His face 
the inexplicable look of a living, breathing 
human being who has passed triumphantly 
from death unto life. 

To get nearer the beginning of the gospel 
story, go to the great gallery in Dresden. 
If you are going from America, stop at New 
York City and look upon La Farge’s “Ar- 
rival of the Magi at Bethlehem,” in the 
Church of the Incarnation, and also visit the 
112 


CHEISTIAN TEACHING IN AET 


Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Dresden 
Gallery contains Correggio’s ‘‘Adoration of 
the Shepherds.” Everything in the picture 
suggests rapture and joyous emotion. Much 
is due to the presenting of the figures in 
action:, and still more to the remarkable use 
of light, making the Christ-child both center 
and source. The spiritual suggestion in the 
picture is of the highest worth. You do not 
wonder that the shepherds worshiped Him 
as Master and King. 

“Art Thou, weak Babe, my very God? 

0, I must love Thee then, — 

Love Thee, and yearn to spread Thy love 
Among forgetful men.’^ 

— Faber. 

For a lesson on the humanity of the di- 
vine, study Burne-Jones’s “Nativity,” in 
that famous window in St. Philip’s Church, 
Birmingham. In the foreground, lying on 
the stone floor of a rude cave, is the infant 
Jesus. Every other artist has made the Child 
the most conspicuous figure in the group, 
but here He is the least conspicuous. The 
artist shows rare discernment, putting a new 
« 113 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

meaning upon the life and history of Jesus. 
The One who was to perfume the world with 
the breath of the divine becomes a mere 
babe, horn the lowliest of the lowly. Here 
is an artist who has gone to the limit in giv- 
ing to Jesus a real humanity. 

Wlien in London, for the spirit in which 
to study art, tarry first in the Chapel of the 
Ascension, apart from the busy thorough- 
fares, on Bayswater Road. This chapel was 
designed not as a housing for services or 
sermon, hut as a place of silent worship 
through the influence and spiritual sugges- 
tion of the pictures of Christ upon its walls. 
On one side of the entrance are the words : 

‘‘Passengers through the busy streets of London 
Enter this Sanctuary for Rest and Silence and 
Prayer, 

Let the pictured walls within Speak of the Past, 
Yet ever Continuing Ways of God with Man.’* 

On the other side we read: 

“Is it nothing to You, all Ye that Pass by? 

Come and rest awhile. 

Commune with your own Hearts and be still. 
Jesus Christ, the Same Yesterday, To-day and 
Forever. ’ ’ 


114 


CHRISTIAN TEACHING IN ART 


Shining from the timbers of the ceiling in 
the antechapel are the words: 

‘‘He who himself and God would know 
Into the silence let him go.’’ 

Within is Frederic Shields’s portrayal of 
Christ in many Gospel scenes. We come 
from this retreat conscions of new strength 
and light, and reassured of the abiding and 
guiding presence of Him who lived on 
earth to save and to inspire to highest en- 
deavor. 

In the National Gallery in London is 
Murillo’s “Christ Child,” in the famous 
group known as the “Holy Family.” The 
face is that of a typical child, with an added 
touch of seriousness and a hint of premature 
age. Here is a suggestion of what all chil- 
dren were intended to be, while the lesson 
of the picture as a whole is that of the sanc- 
tity of human love. 

For elaborate illustration of the life of 
Christ and His apostles, the South Kensing- 
ton Museum in London affords rare oppor- 
tunity. Here is a remarkable series of 
Raphael cartoons, setting forth many im- 
115 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 


portant incidents and representing Christ 
under great variety of circumstances. 

EaphaePs ‘^Transfigurations^ was Ms last 
work and was not yet fimshed at the time 
of Ms deatli. It is considered the finest art 
treasure in the Vatican. Here is a twofold 
representation : that of the transfigured 
Christ, and that of the demoniac child 
brought to Christ by the disciples. The pic- 
ture teaches the glory of the transfigured 
life and the still greater glory in the blend- 
ing of the beatific vision with the ministry 
of service. Still another lesson is found in 
the spirtual significance of the presence of 
Moses and Elijah. The immortal expression 
of the artist is that “death is not an end, 
but a change.’’ 

“His sun has set full orbed, and all its splendors 
Still enrich and warm us.” 

Hohnan Hunt was the leader of the pre- 
Eaphael school. His masterpiece, “The 
Light of the World,” is to be found in the 
Lady Chapel of Keble College in Oxford. It 
is easily one of the richest treasures of mod- 
em art, and as a message of a prophet of 
116 


CHRISTIAN TEACHING IN ART 


God it has not been surpassed. He ^^ap- 
proached his canvas with the same spirit 
which fills a prophet about to deliver his mes- 
sage.’’ The inevitable solitariness of Jesus 
is made vividly impressive, and suggests the 
solitariness of all souls who are thrilled by 
a redemptive purpose. In the last aualysis 
Jesus is made to stand alone, as the One who 
can illumine life’s mysteries and bring light 
to the darkened soul. 

‘‘The Last Supper,” of Leonardo da 
Vinci, is the chief treasure of the Milan Con- 
vent. It seeks to represent the pathos and 
sadness of the scene as Jesus announces, 
“One of you shall betray Me,”^ and to show 
the effect of this utterance on the Twelve. 
“The consummate blending of ineffable 
sweetness with infinite sorrow on the face 
of the Divine Leader” proclaims the eternal 
power of His undying love. 

“The Love whose smile kindles the universe, 

The Beauty in which all things live and move.” 

The picture is now faded and worn, but few 
if any others more amply illustrate the fact 


in 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

that truth, reality, sincerity is a foremost 
condition of art. 

One of the best pictures of the crucifixion 
is Munkacsy^s ‘‘Christ on the Cross.’’ The 
executioner is a startlingly realistic figure, 
whose brutal face assures us of the fact that 
the features are a transcript of character, 
habit, and association. Judas is represented 
as worn, haggard, and miserable, as though 
he were still crying, “I have shed innocent 
blood.” The figure of Christ seeks to show 
the divine love in sacrifice, but the picture 
suggests the impossibility of adequate ex- 
pression of truths so profoundly spiritual. 
“The Christ is a magnificent artistic tri- 
umph, but it only represents a common man 
dying upon the cross. Divinity can never be 
delineated. ’ ’ 

Another quite acceptable representation 
of the crucifixion is that of Guido Reni, to 
be found in Rome. To an unusual degree 
the artist has succeeded in making the ex- 
pression one of spiritual, and not of phys- 
ical, anguish. One can almost hear from the 
parted lips the Savior’s cry, “My God, My 
God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” 

118 


CHEISTIAN TEACHING IN AET 


The sculptor Donatello has a work in the 
Santa Croce in Florence which, as an inter- 
pretation of the crucifixion, is an approach 
in the right direction. In spite of the an- 
guish the aspect is one of dignity, and Christ 
is made to appear not as one conquered by 
death, but as the Conqueror over death. 
‘^0 death, where is thy sting? 0 grave, 
where is thy victory? Thanks be to God, 
which giveth us the victory through our Lord 
Jesus Christ.’^ But when all is said it must 
still be granted that the genius of human art 
is outdistanced by this theme that carries us 
into the very heart of God, where ‘ ‘ such love 
and sorrow meet^’ as surpasseth all human 
understanding. 

By common consent the masterpiece of 
Eubens is “The Descent from the Cross, 
now to be found in the Antwerp Cathedral. 
As one looks, the eye is irresistibly drawn 
to Christ. 

“His vissage so marred, more than any man, 
And His form more than the sons of men. ’ ’ 

In the Sistine Chapel is Angelo’s “Last 
Judgment.” As a work of art it is tremen- 
119 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

dous, but it is a scene sublime and awful, 
never to be forgotten. Here is ‘‘Christ as 
Judge, rising from His throne in threatening 
wrath, and forming His lips for the awful 
doom of the wicked, ‘Depart from Me, ye 
cursed.’ ” One can not but feel that it rep- 
resents the interpretation of minds like 
Dante and Savonarola, rather than the spirit 
of Christ, leaving out, as it does, every sug- 
gestion of sympathy, tenderness, and sorrow, 
and giving no glimpse of the future of the 
blessed. Perhaps it is noteworthy, princi- 
pally, not as the interpretation of a theme, 
but as the interpretation of a master. 

From the Cross and the Judgment we are 
quite willing to return to Eembrandt’s Ees- 
urrection scene, and to see beyond our tears 
the vision of George Frederick Watts. 

“Exult, my soul! Cast off thy gloom! 

The balm and bloom of Easter saith 
That Christ is victor o ’er the tomb 
And Love is mightier than death.’’ 

Watts, following out this thought, has given 
us a picture of Love and Death, interpreting 


120 


CHRISTIAN TEACHING IN ART 


death, in the light of the resurrection, as the 
approach to glorious and unending day. 

Thus has art become an evangel, and is 
consecrated to Christ. It is an expression 
and teacher of Christian truth. It is in the 
service of the Divine Spirit, bearing His 
message to the hearts of men. ‘ ‘ It preaches 
from the frescoes of convent and chapel, from 
the glowing canvas and the breathing-stone, 
from bronze gate and marble Campanile, 
from lofty spire and swelling dome. It 
preaches the story of Bethlehem from the 
canvas of Correggio ; it preaches of the Holy 
Child and of the Transfiguration from the 
easel of Raphael; it preaches of the Last 
Supper from the brush of Leonardo; it 
preaches of the Crucifixion from the pictures 
of Guido Reni, Albert Durer and Munkacsy ; 
it preaches of the Resurrection and the Final 
Judgment from the magnificent frescoes of 
Michael Angelo. Poetry, music, and art have 
all contributed beautiful expression to the 
teachings of divine truth. What David sings 
in the Psalms, Solomon builds in the temple ; 
what Dante expresses in a great poem, An- 
gelo expresses in a great fresco; >^hat Ra- 
121 


THE QUEST OP TEUTH 


phael sets fortli in a glorious painting, Han- 
del sets fortli in a glorious oratorio; what 
Milton celebrates in a sublime epic, Sir Cbris- 
topber Wren immortalizes in a grand cathe- 
dral. And the supreme homage of what is 
beautiful in them all is paid to Jesus Christ, 
the Son of God, the Son of man.’’ 

‘‘Our Shield and Defender, the Ancient of Days, 
Pavillioned in splender, and girded with praise.” 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Story of Art Throughout the Ages. — Beinach. 
Modern Painters. — Buskin. 

The Messages of the Masters. — Bradford. 

Christian Art. — Lindsay. 

The Christ Child in Art. — Yan Dyke. 

The Story of the Masterpieces. — Stewart. 

The Appreciation of Pictures. — Sturgis. 

The Appreciation of Sculpture. — Sturgis. 

Christ in Art. — French. 

The Face of Jesus. — Taintor. 

The Ministry of Art. — Bristol. 

The Young Man and Himself. — Kirtley. 

The Assurance of Faith. — Guth. 

The Foundations of Belief. — Balfour. 
Fundamentals of the Christian Religion. — Half- 
yard. 


122 


CHEISTIAN TEACHING IN AET 


Practical Sociology. — Wright. 

Impressions of a Careless Traveler. — Abbott. 
Socialism and Social Reform. — Ely. 

Student’s History of Philosophy. — Rogers. 

A Short History of the Christian Church. — Mon- 
crief. 

History of the Christian Church. — Burst. 
Self-Measurement. — Hyde. 

The World as the Subject of Redemption. — Fre- 
mantle. 

The Varieties of Religious Experience. — James. 
The Royalty of Jesus. — Luccock. 

John Ruskin. — Montgomery. 

The New Epoch for Faith. — Gordon. 

The Simple Life. — Wagner. 

The Ruling Passion. — Van Dyke. 

The Gospel for an Age of Doubt. — Van Dyke. 

The Magnetism of the Cross. — Swift. 

The Beauty of Jesus. — Elliott. 

The Might of Right. — Gladstone. 

Beautiful Thoughts. — Gladstone. 

Visions of the Christ. — Gilbert. 

The Life of Jesus the Christ. — Beecher. 

Right Living as a Fine Art. — HilUs. 

Culture and Restraint. — Black. 

The Philosophy of the Christian Religion. — Fair- 
bairn. 

The Crises of the Christ. — Morgan. 


123 


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i 


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I 

■ I 



Music and the Religious Life 


‘‘Praise ye the Lord. 

Praise God in the sanctuary; 

Praise Him in the firmament of His power; 
Praise Him for His mighty acts ; 

Praise Him according to His excellent greatness ; 
Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet ; 
Praise Him with the psaltry and harp. 

Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. 
Praise ye the Lord.’^ — Psalm 150. 

“The Lord is my strength and my shield; my 
heart trusted in Him, and I am helped: therefore 
my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will 
I praise Him.^^ — Psalm 28; 7. 


MUSIC AND THE EELIGIOUS LIFE 


Is MUSIC a diversion, an amusement, a grace- 
ful accomplisliment for women, a pleasing 
member of the family of Fine Arts ? It may 
be all of these, and more. How much more? 
Is it essential in man? Is it fundamental in 
God? Does it involve and express truth from 
God vital to man? 

The mighty Shakespeare has said, 

‘‘The man that hath no music in his soul, 

And is moved not by concord of sweet sounds ; 
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.” 

True! for music is in the universe, in man, 
and in God by the very nature of things. 
“The man that hath no music in his soul” 
has fallen out with the divine order through 
the discord of sin. Such an one is fit for just 
such things as spring naturally out of the 
corrupted source of an evil nature, not in 
tune with the Infinite. 

The universe is set to the rhythmical 

127 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

music of God. ^‘The cosmos is musical 
through, and through, and the modem Occi- 
dental scale in its main components is sug- 
gested in nature.’’ It is claimed that there 
is a point in space where all the discordant 
noises of earth meet in a musical note. If 
you play a violin, though it he ever so softly, 
beside a glass covered with sand, the grains 
of sand will he shaped into regular figures, 
organized to music. Just as the song of 
human life is determined by its dominant 
note, the purpose that organizes and directs 
it, so everything in nature has its keynote. 
Balzac declared, ‘‘I say that music is an art 
woven from the very bowels of nature.’’ 

‘‘Music is in all growing things; 

And underneath the silky wings 
Of smallest insects there is stirred 
A pulse of air that must be heard; 

Earth’s silence lives and throbs and sings.” 

Bushnell was right: “Every thing that the 
sun shines upon, sings, or can be made to 
sing, and can be heard to sing.” Even the 
echoes that reverberate through the hills de- 
clare the earth a great instmment of music. 

128 


MUSIC AND THE EELIGIOUS LIFE 


‘‘Everything in natnre seems keyed to take 
its place in the cosmic symphony/’ The 
sway of the spirit of music is universal. Car- 
lyle said, “All inmost things are melodious; 
naturally utter themselves in song. The 
meaning of song goes deep. . . . All deep 
things are song. It seems somehow the very 
central essence of us, song; as if all the rest 
were but wrappages and hulls ! The primal 
element of us; and of all things. . . . See 
deep enough, and you see musically ; the heart 
of nature being everywhere music, if you can 
only reach it.” Carlyle would quite agree 
with Beethoven that “music is the inner es- 
sential nature of all that is.” Or with Ed- 
wards, that “music is a symbol foreshadow- 
ing the final consonance of all things, ma- 
terial and spiritual. It is a breaking into 
sound of the fundamental rhythm of univer- 
sal being.” It is the universal ethical har- 
mony of a moral world. 

“He who with bold and skillful hand sweeps o’er 
The organ keys of some cathedral pile, 
Flooding with music vault and nave and aisle, 
While on his ear falls but a thunderous roar — 


129 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 


In the composer’s lofty motive free, 

Knows well that all that temple vast and dim 
Thrills to its base with anthem, psalm, or hymn, 
True to the changeless laws of harmony. 

So he who on the changing chords of life 
With firm, sweet touch plays the great Master’s 
score 

Of Truth and Love and Duty, evermore, 

Knows, too, that far beyond this roar and strife. 
Though he may never hear, in the true time 
These notes must all accord in symphonies sub- 
lime.” 

Man is made on God’s musical plan. We 
find music in the inorganic world, in all the 
physical creation, and in the lower animal 
life ; but man shows special adaptation and 
capacity for music. In him it becomes in- 
tellectual and purposed. And yet a rhyth- 
mical universe and a musical humanity re- 
spond to the same law and speed the will of 
the one only Law-giver. ‘‘The same laws 
of vibrant sound govern the notes of the 
human voice and the thunders of Niagara. 
The ascending series of overtones is said to 
be found at the same intervals in the cata- 
ract’s awful music as in the softest accents 
of a child or of a prima donna.” But this 
130 


MUSIC AND THE RELIGIOUS LIFE 


unity of God’s musical creation is tlie unity 
of an ascending scale, in wliicli man stands 
at the head. 

“From harmony, from heavenly harmony, 

This universal frame began; 

From harmony to harmony 

Through all the compass of the notes it ran. 
The diapason closing full in man,” 

“The music of the world is human. No bird- 
song so wonderful as the human voice; no 
habhle of a brook so musical as the ripple 
of innocent laughter in a happy home; no 
solemn chant of winds so grand as the psalm 
rolled into the sky by worshiping assemblies. 
To stand by the ocean and hear the beat of 
its stupendous pulse is to take the sound of 
a shallower deep and a narrower sea than 
when you lay your ear against the throbbing 
of a human heart.” 

“Man is by nature musical. The gift of 
song is primeval. By divine fiat he is a sing- 
ing animal. Men have from the beginning 
loved music. There is a Lamech singing in 
the early dawn of the history of every peo- 
ple, and a Juhal fashioning harps and pipes. ’ ’ 
131 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

As men and religion liave progressed, music 
lias become more and not less. It has as- 
sumed loftier expression and more perfect 
form. It has not become less universal, but 
has grown in favor and in power. ‘‘The 
Jewish Church seized upon this natural apti- 
tude and made use of it in the temple service, 
in every synagogue, and in every Jewish 
home. On the night on which Jesus was be- 
trayed He and His disciples, true to the tra- 
ditions of their nation, sang psalms. Our 
Lord went into the shadows of Gethsemane 
singing. What the Jewish Church did well 
the Christian Church has done still better. 
It was never known how much music lies in 
the human soul till the angels sang their 
song of peace and good-will, and Jesus mel- 
lowed the hearts of men by His heavenly mes- 
sage. Music as we know it may be said to 
be the daughter of the Christian Church. By 
liberating the heart Christianity made a new 
development of music inevitable.’’ But 
whether in the most primitive or fully devel- 
oped form, the fact is ever apparent that 
man is by nature musical, and becomes more 
so with the tide of human progress. 

132 


MUSIC AND THE RELIGIOUS LIFE 


The universe and man, musical in the 
very constitution and nature of things, are a 
witness to and a revelation of God. The uni- 
versal provision for music, in nature and 
man, suggests a music-loving Creator. If 
God is creator of things as they are essen- 
tially, then He is Master Musician, and the 
indications of His tonal thought and feeling, 
which everywhere abound, intimate that mu- 
sic is not an accident of creation, but funda- 
mental in the Creative Mind. Who and wbat 
does music suggest God to be! Music tells, 
in tones clear and winning, of the God of 
melody and harmony. 

“A Spirit sways the music, 

A hand is on the chords. 

0, how thy head and listen — 

That hand, it is the Lord^s.’’ 

Music proclaims a God of law. We speak of 
law in nature and life as involving Intelligent 
Will and a Supreme Law-giver. But no- 
where does law rule with greater strictness 
than in music. Without unity and law, music 
becomes at once impossible. Manifold cor- 
relations and evident design suggest a Divine 
133 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

Mind of Infinite Intelligence. ‘‘The history 
of music is a history of design.’’ “The ad- 
justments of nature to provide for music 
and its enjoyment, give cumulative evidence 
of the purposive activity of a scientific, aes- 
thetic, and generous Being at the causal 
fountain-head. ’ ’ God by His essential nature 
must plan for His creature’s enjoyment and 
well-being. We may take the ear as an ex- 
ample. How marvelous this hit of mech- 
anism, delicate in structure, and perfectly 
adapted to bring together a musical universe, 
a world of music, and a musical soul. A mere 
infant can perceive and judge of musical 
sounds, although the process is so profound 
that it can only be solved by logarithms. 
Music has been called “the beautifier of 
time,” and what is the aesthetic if it be not 
a revelation of the ideal beauty of the holy 
nature of God? The God of music is the 
God of melody and harmony, the God of 
unity and law, the God of intellect, of taste, 
and of the ideal of beauty, the God of power 
over the spiritual nature, the God of good- 
ness and of truth. These things at least must 
pertain to the nature of the God, to whom 
134 


MUSIC AND THE EELIGIOUS LIFE 


music bears testimony. When placed beside 
the larger revelation this witness is seen to 
possess great value, and so far as it goes it 
stands without need of correction. 

“There is no truer truth obtained by; man 
Than comes by music.” 

Music is a foremost medium of communi- 
cation between the divine and the human. 
Through it God and men get together. 
Through it God speaks. 

“If God speaks anywhere, in any voice, 

To us His creatures, surely here and now 
We hear Him, while the great chords seem to bow 
Our heads, and all the symphony ^s breathless noise 
Breaks over us, with challenge to our souls ! 
Beethoven’s music! From the mountain peaks 
The strong, divine, compelling thunder rolls; 
And, ‘Come up higher!’ the words it speaks, 

‘Out of your darkened valleys of despair; 
Behold, I lift you up on mighty wings 
Into Hope’s living, reconciling air!’” 

Even in that divinest revelation, the Book of 
books, God chose to speak in song. It may 
be doubted if any other portion of the Book 
is so generally loved and accepted, and this 
largely because of the charm and power of 
135 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

its musical expression. The Psalms was the 
Hebrew hymn-book. The word in the Hebrew 
language meant ‘‘Praises/’ or “Songs of 
Praise.” Our word “Psalms” was given to 
the book by those who spoke Greek, and 
means “songs set to music.” The name 
Psalter is taken almost without change from 
the Greek word for a stringed instrument. 
“With the music of the Psalms the shepherds 
and ploughman cheered their toil in ancient 
Palestine; and to the same music the Gallic 
boatmen kept time as they rowed their barges 
against the swift current of the Rhone. A 
psalm supplied the daily grace with which 
the early Christians blessed their food; and 
the same psalm was repeated by the commu- 
nicants as they went to the Lord’s table.” 
Psalm 24 was a marching chorus, the choral 
song of a multitude. We stand upon the hills 
that guard Jerusalem as now out of the wil- 
derness the long triumphal procession passes 
by with joy and singing, conveying the Ark 
of the Covenant to its victorious resting-place 
in the city of David. Several of the Psalms 
represent life as a pilgrimage, made glad by 
songs of home. “Thy statutes have been my 
136 


MUSIC AND THE EELIGIOUS LIFE 


song in the house of my pilgrimage. ’ ’ Even 
the law of God is itself set to music, as if 
God and His law were the music of life. And 
why not? For the foundations of God’s uni- 
verse were laid ‘^amid the glad chanting of 
the morning stars, its walls arose with song 
of angelic rejoicing, and its final glories shall 
he revealed when Law and Love sing together 
the song of Moses and the Lamb, with the 
voice of a great multitude, the voice of many 
waters, and the voice of mighty thunder- 
ings.” Meanwhile along the dusty pathway 
of life God speaks to those 

‘‘Who carry music in their heart 
Through dusky lane and wrangling mart, 
Plying their daily task with busier feet 
Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat.^’ 

Through music man speaks of God and to 
God. Our thought of God is penetrated and 
transfigured by song. It is ‘translated into 
speech, higher than the speech of common 
day, full of the mystic passion that seeks the 
eternal.” This, however, can not be said of 
a type of songs that voice the language of 
sensuous sentiment and sickly amorons de- 
137 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

votion. These represent the aestheticism of 
man, rather than the majesty of God, that 
ought to inspire our worship. We need, too, 
to avoid cheap and sensational music. Like 
sensational preaching, it gains immediate re- 
sults, if any, at the expense of the future. 
Keep the standard high. Be not afraid of 
a tune because it is old, for the old great 
things have a peculiar charm. Stand not 
aloof from any tune because it is new. ‘ ‘ Sing 
unto the Lord a new-made song.’’ 

Fully as important as the expression of 
our thought of God is the expression of our 
thought and feeling to God. Music gives 
to the dumb spirit speech fit for the pres- 
ence of God. There is necessity in the 
religious life for self-utterance. The un- 
usual fitness of music for this purpose 
soon became apparent, and it was early 
adopted as an expressional aid to worship. 
‘‘Music is rhythmical sound used as a means 
of expression.” Though it is rhythmic 
sound, it is more. It is the “expression of 
spiritual experiences.” It is the “very soul 
of motion, and immanent in all right feeling, 
thought, and action. Melody is more than a 
138 


MUSIC AND THE EELIGIOUS LIFE 


mere alternation of tone. It is a kind of lan- 
guage by means of which the soul’s deepest 
emotions seek expression. One of the most 
vital of these emotions is that of gratitude 
and love to God, of which praise is the mu- 
sical expression. As a common and etfective 
medium of expression, music is ^‘the elect 
art of religion.” ‘Ht speaks of God, from 
God, for God, and to God.” 

Music is a sort of universal language. 
The musician interprets nature, human life, 
the deep things of the soul, and the revela- 
tions of God in universal speech. Every 
heart can understand it, for every man is by 
nature disposed to music sentimentally, even 
though organically he may be incapable of 
a tune. There is a language here which is 
universal because it is the soul-language. 

Music hath charms and throws her spell 
over all mankind. We sit and listen to the 
oratorio or the symphony, the violinist or 
the singer, and a flow of feeling comes rush- 
ing over us, memories of scenes and faces 
crowd upon us, we are living in the past, 
the years have thrown a halo over our child- 
hood and youth, and we live them again in 
139 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

golden dreams. Or we are projected into 
the future. We look upon that which might 
he; the years expand before us; we walk as 
in marble halls, amid fragrant odors, and 
past cooling fountains. We forget the pres- 
ent, the daily toils and cares, the disappoint- 
ments, the circumscribed outlooks. For at 
that moment the voice of the Eternal is 
speaking and we are lost in the Great Soul 
of which we are a part and which forever 
calls us. Music speaks its universal language 
and makes the deepest depths of man’s be- 
ing responsive. We listen, and exclaim, 
‘How hear we every man in our own tongue 
in which we were born?’ ” 

Music, as a means of expression, must 
have something worthy of expressing. Un- 
belief and infidelity neither produce nor ap- 
preciate great music. It is essentially reli- 
gious in character. The history of religion 
and of music have developed together. Un- 
belief is the anarchy of the soul. And “an- 
archy sings no songs, and keeps no step with 
the divine purpose. Lawlessness has no or- 
ganizing power. Somewhere its waves break 
helplessly against the granite cliffs of the 
140 


MUSIC AND THE EELKHOUS LIFE 


eternal laws of God.’^ Music glorifies tlie 
obedience of faith and is a witness to a right- 
eous King and a moral government of the 
world. 

No pagan religion has ever given us great 
music, for the very sufficient reason that pa- 
gan religions can not. Even the nations of 
great culture have failed. The Greeks were 
naturally a musical people, but their music 
was principally in the minor mode, contem- 
plating, as many believe, melody only, and 
knowing nothing of the laws of symphonetic 
harmony. The famous odes of the Eomans 
were accompanied only by a kind of a reci- 
tative. Music requires that we know God, 
its Author. 

‘‘He only sees who is happy in the seeing, 

He only hears in the gladness of belief.” 

The Hebrews made the first pronounced 
approach to real and great music, made pos- 
sible by the character of their religion. With 
the inspiration of a nobler and more ani- 
mating worship, they had their psaltry, Karp, 
cymbal, flute, timbril, trumpet, and shawn, 
gathered singing men and women around 
141 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

their court, and carefully maintained their 
schools of musicians, with multitudes of min- 
isters for the service of song. Their fore- 
most achievement was their Psalms, which 
were praise-hymns to be given with instru- 
mental accompaniment. 

Christianity affords both the theme and 
the impulse necessary to great music. No 
other sources furnish such subject and senti- 
ment for music as does the Christian religion, 
with its love, its service, its sacrifice, and its 
Christ. Music is the child of Christianity. 
^ ‘ To be sure, they sang and had music among 
people who lived before Christ came, and 
never knew that He would come. But that 
music lacked its theme, lacked its spiritual 
quality, lacked its inspiration. It is histor- 
ically true that the whole art of modern 
music is a product of the Christian experi-^ 
ences of men. It is Christ that inspired it; 
it is He who spoke to and through the great 
souls of Handel and Bach and Beethoven and 
Mozart. It is not only historically true that 
devotion to Him stirred the genius of the 
masters and gave rise to this wonderful 
growth, but, smiting on the chords of men^s 
142 


MUSIC AND THE RELIGIOUS LIFE 


souls, and inspiring them with the deathless 
motive of love, standing before their loving 
gaze and giving them a perfect theme and a 
perfect ideal, He has wrought out through 
the souls of men the richest and noblest in 
the music that helps us, from the sublime 
oratorio of the Messiah to the sweet, simple 
hymns of the sanctuary.’’ 

Music requires deep feeling, such as has 
never been supplied outside of Christianity. 
Sorrow of repentance, conscious salvation, 
love, exultant joy, and profound gratitude 
are well-springs of feeling. The doctrine of 
repentance must live in the hearts of men 
before we can have a ‘ ^ Miserere. ’ ’ The exult- 
ant hope of Christianity must become a fact 
of life before the soul can give expression to 
a ‘‘Gloria.” Heaven must be in the soul be- 
fore a Handel, exclaiming, “I did think I 
did see all heaven before me, and the great 
God Himself,” can give us the Hallelujah 
and Amen Choruses of the “Messiah.” 

Christianity is the religion of song. It 
thrust itself upon the world with the anthem 
of the skies, “Glory to God in the highest, 
peace on earth, to men good will.” From 
143 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

the joy of the Lord in the hearts of men 
Christ has created a world of song. ‘^The 
heart-songs of the world are bom of the 
great hopes of the gospel. ’ ’ The tension of 
life bursting into noonday splendor put music 
to its severest test as an elastic art. Chris- 
tianity must have new modes of tuneful ut- 
terance, capable of rising to the expression 
of a soul-quickening so great that it amounted 
to an overwhelming passion. Rich and lofty 
spiritual joy in the worship of God soon 
called for antiphonal chants in unison, with 
appropriate music for the Trisagion or se- 
raphical hymn. With the use of the laws of 
harmony, various instruments were added, 
until at last the organ found its place of 
prominence in divine worship. In the effort 
to express so great a fullness of meaning and 
so great a depth of feeling and experience in 
religion, music became ever richer and 
grander in anthem, mass, and mighty ora- 
torio, in the passionate wail of the ‘‘Mise- 
rere’’ and the exultant chords of the “Jubi- 
late,” in the “Gloria in Excelsis” and the 
“Te Deum,” in the great common liturgies 
and the immortal hymns of the Church. 

144 


MUSIC AND THE RELIGIOUS LIFE 

The great masters and writers of song 
have regarded their work as a duty and serv- 
ice to religion. In most instances it was a 
duty of privilege and a service of joy. The 
great composer Haydn, when asked why his 
Church music was always so full of gladness, 
replied, can not make it otherwise. I 
write according to the thoughts I feel ; when 
I think upon my God, my heart is so full of 
joy that the notes dance and leap from my 
pen; and since God has given me a cheerful 
heart, it will he pardoned me that I serve 
Him with a cheerful spirit.” So, too, in sing- 
ing and the rendering of music it is not 
enough to please. Real worth is rooted in 
Christian experience and religious appreci- 
ation, and is at the impulse of love, in the 
joy of service. Music must be from the heart. 
At a service in the north of Scotland, where 
about two thousand five hundred people 
joined in the singing of psalms, Mr. Moody 
said : never heard the Twenty- third Psalm 

sung so well, and I wonder how many sang it 
from the heart. I should like to have all who 
can sing it from the heart rise and sing it 
again. ’ ’ About fifty people arose, and Moody 
145 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 


said he never heard it sung so poorly. It 
is one thing to sing, ‘‘The Lord is my Shep- 
herd,’’ and it is another thing to believe it 
and enjoy the conscious experience of His 
leading. 

The musician who carries us out of the 
reach of care into the realms where the air 
we breathe is love is a messenger of the 
Most High and a revealer to us of the nature 
of God. Through music help may come in 
relief to the body and quiet to the nerves. 
Musico-therapy has shown itself of value in 
many experiments. Tennyson speaks of 

‘‘Music that brings sweet sleep down from the 
blissful skies. 

Henry Van Dyke says of music: 

“Thou art the Angel of the pool that sleeps, 
While peace and joy lie hidden in its deeps, 
Waiting thy touch to make the waters roll 
In healing murmurs round the weary soul.” 

How often has comfort to the sad and the 
weary-hearted been wafted home on the 
wings of song ! Mendelssohn once invited to 
his home Madame Ertmann, who was in deep 
146 


MUSIC AND THE EELIGIOUS LIFE 


sorrow over the loss of a child. Seated at 
the piano, he gently said, ‘‘Let ns speak to 
each other by mtisic.’’ The woman was 
touched with the music’s tender message and 
healing ministry, and declared, “He said 
much to me, and at last gave me consola- 
tion.” It is just as Longfellow has said: 

“And the night shall be filled with music, 

And the cares that infest the day 
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, 

And as silently steal away.” 

Music is fundamentally altruistic, “and has 
been called the altruistic art.” 

“Music, sister of sunrise and herald of life to he, 
Smiled as dawn on the spirit of man, and the 
thrall was free.” — Swinburne. 

Jenny lind, singing for a hospital benefit, is 
thrilled with the possibilities for doing good, 
and exclaims, “Is it not beautiful that I can 
sing so ! ” Mr. Tomlins, of Chicago, has done 
a great musical work among poor boys and 
girls. He has had opportunity to watch the 
influence in the development of gentleness, 
thoughtfulness, modesty, and the finer quali- 
147 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 


ties of life. Later lie said to these young 
people, whose lives had been ennobled by 
music, ‘ ‘ God has given you voices, and taught 
you to use them; why not sing to help your 
neighbors!” And surely, why not! For 
music is not only altruistic, hut it is the social 
art, democratic and communistic in its nature. 

It is this fact very largely that gives value 
and prominence to the musicale. To the man 
and to the woman who have cultivated their 
tastes to appreciate and enjoy its mellowing 
effect there are few things in the world so 
elevating and full of enjoyment as music. It 
will uplift them from the most sordid cares 
of life and make the deserts of the mind to 
blossom with luxuriant fragrance and beauty. 
<<The golden tinted hopes and rosy aspira- 
tions of one ^s youth come hack with the sound 
of a long-forgotten melody.” Let us urge 
the musicale, the lyceum, the Chautauqua, 
the concert, and any form of entertainment 
and uplift which has music for at least one 
of its main attractions. These are true bene- 
factions. They are among the greatest moral 
and mental educators of society. 

In every home there should be the cher- 
148 


MUSIC AND THE EELIGIOUS LIFE 


ished musical instrument. It may mean plain 
living to some, at least for a wMle, but it 
will mean high thinking and holy raptures 
of exultant feeling. There will be moments 
of idle dreaming, but there will be also mo- 
ments of mighty inspiration. If only one 
chord divine enter the soul of her who sits 
at the organ, or of him who listens enrap- 
tured in delight, the compensation is not 
small. 

‘‘Seated one day at the organ, 

I was weary and ill at ease, 

And my fingers wandered idly 
Over the noisy keys. 

“I do not know what I was playing 
Or what I was dreaming then; 

But I struck one chord of music 
Like the sound of a great Amen. 

“It flooded the crimson twilight 

Like the close of an angel’s psalm. 

And it lay on my fevered spirit 
With a touch of infinite calm. 

“It quieted pain and sorrow 
Like love overcoming strife; 

It seemed the harmonious echo 
From our discordant life. 

149 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

‘Ht linked all perplexed meanings 
Into one perfect peace, 

And trembled away into silence 
As if it were loath to cease. 

‘H have sought, but I seek it vainly, 

That one lost chord divine 
That came from the soul of the organ 
And entered into mine. 

“It may be that death’s bright angel 
iWill speak in that chord again; 

It may be that only in heaven 
I shall hear that grand Amen.” 

« — ^Adelaide A. Procter. 

In dealing with youth, music is opportu- 
nity. Here is an influence, possible even in 
the earliest infancy. Much education is of 
necessity long delayed. Possibly this is the 
reason why Plato, in his “Ideal Eepuhlic,’^ 
makes education begin with music, in which 
term, however, he includes literature. His 
program was, music for the soul, and gym- 
nastics for the body — ^but the soul first. And 
really this is not so bad, nor have we greatly 
improved upon it. Music shapes the emo- 
tions, fancies, and ideals ; all of which needs 
150 


MUSIC AND THE EELIGIOUS LIFE 


to be done at tbe earliest possible moment. 
Harmony as it expresses itself in sound is 
vitally related to the highest there is in us. 

The power of music is past all calculation. 
Fletcher, of Saltoun, said, ‘‘Let me make the 
songs of a people, and I care not who makes 
their laws. ’ ^ One can not know and feel the 
meaning of a land or country without know- 
ing their songs. Much of the earliest history 
is preserved to us in the measures of lyric 
poetry and song. Music fixes in the memory 
the sentiment and truth desired. So, like- 
wise, music keeps alive and develops the spir- 
itual sensibilities of a people. It is 

“The cry of the Ideal, cry 
To aspirations that would die.” 

The great progressive movements of the 
Church bear testimony to the power of music. 
The Church has been singing its way to vic- 
tory ever since the Day of Pentecost. The 
Church of the first century is pictured by 
Pliny as singing. The Lollards filled all Eng- 
land with their hymns. Luther understood 
this singular power of music, and his own 
great hymn became the “Marsellaise of the 
151 


THE QUEST OP TRUTH 

Reformation.’^ Frederick the Great said, 
‘‘It is God Almighty’s Grenadier March.” 

“A mighty fortress is our God, 

A bulwark never failing: 

Our Helper He, amid the flood 
Of mortal ills prevailing.” 

The Romanist said, “The whole people is 
singing itself into the Lutheran doctrine.” 
Wesley’s hymns were a powerful factor in 
the Methodist Evangel. “When bloodthirsty 
crowds could not be quelled by John Wes- 
ley’s coal-black eye, nor by Whitefield’s im- 
perial voice, they were often known to turn 
and slink away when the truth was sung at 
them in Charles Wesley’s hymns.” Charles 
Wesley was the hymnist of the Methodist 
movement. Every doctrine, every phase of 
its religious experience, and almost every 
turn in its history was incarnated in his 
verse. Missionary and revival endeavor al- 
ways utilize music as a main factor in their 
work. From the days of the earliest evan- 
gelism to the most recent revival it is ever 
true that where the Spirit of God moves 
mightily, the people burst into song. In re- 
152 


MUSIC AND THE EELIGIOUS LIFE 


vival effort there is an unfortunate tendency 
toward easy and catchy music that merely 
plays on the surface of religious sentimen- 
tality. This class of music does not produce 
the best results, if we consider the under- 
lying purpose of evangelistic meetings to be 
the genuine conviction that changes the cur- 
rent of the life, and not merely the exciting 
of superficial religious emotions. 

The appeal of music is very largely to the 
emotions. The emotions of the soul respond 
to music. Music is the language of the 
heart. Song is the natural speech of the 
emotions. When the heart is stirred, it sings. 
By singing it stirs itself still more deeply. 
Music not only expresses but itensifies the 
feelings. The mood which a song expresses 
is strengthened and perpetuated by the sing- 
ing of the song. No man sings to himself. 
He communicates his mood to those who hear 
him. When men and women sing together, 
they impart to one another the sentiment of 
that which they sing, and thus community of 
feeling is established and spirits are brought 
into beautiful accord. If by prayer the 
human heart is awed and elevated, then by 
153 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

song tlie human heart is socialized and broad- 
ened. Music expands the sympathies and 
feeds the social nature. Self-centeredness 
and exclusiveness melt down under the reign 
of melody. Touched by the spell of harmo- 
nious tones, minds and hearts flow together 
and a congregation becomes one soul. In 
music there is something heavenly, before 
which earthly moods and worldly tempers in- 
evitably give way. The basest man feels less 
sordid after he has been immersed in a foun- 
tain of song. The streams of tone wipe out 
dividing lines, efface the springs of bitter- 
ness, wear away estranging walls, and can be 
made to bring a whole congregation out into 
a large and wealthy place. Music rightly 
used does the very work which the preacher 
wants accomplished. It develops the sense 
of fellowship and builds up the brotherhood.’^ 
Such results are possible largely because of 
the nature and responsiveness of the emo- 
tional life. The utility and value of music 
to religion lies principally in the sphere of 
the emotions. Music has a function as a 
means of impressing truth upon the mind 
and thought, but its larger service is in reach- 
154 


MUSIC AND THE RELIGIOUS LIFE 


ing and profoundly stirring the fountains of 
feeling. ‘‘There is in souls a sympathy with 
sounds.’’ “Music is beauty put into sounds 
that touch the emotions more deeply than any 
other form of art.” Its ministry is more 
varied and is rendered to more people. Then 
why not 

“Read from the treasured volume 
The poem of thy choice, 

And lend to the rhyme of the poet 
The music of thy voice.” 

There is a strong emotional effect in the use 
of rhythm and melody. For example, in such 
methods as those of the Salvation Army the 
catchy, swinging songs are an indispensable 
means of eliciting the desired ecstatic condi- 
tion. Also through the power of auto-sug- 
gestion the expectation of the state is 
strongly influential. 

“Music can noble hints impart, 

Engender fury, kindle love. 

With unsuspected eloquence can move 
And manage all the man with secret art.” 

— Addison. 


155 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

The effect upon us of musical movement is 
well described by Herder. ‘‘The passionate 
part of our nature rises and falls, it throbs 
or glides softly. Now it sweeps us along, 
now holds us back; it is now weak, now 
strong ; its own movement, its step, as 
it were, varies with every modulation, with 
every strong accent, and vanishes as the tone 
varies. Music strikes a chord in our inner- 
most nature.’^ 

“0 strange, sweet power, 

Ineffable! 0 gracious influence! 

I know not whence thou art; but this I know: 
Thou boldest in thy hand the silver key 
That can unlock the secret fount of tears, 

Which, falling, make life green, the hidden spring 
Of purer fancies and high sympathies.’’ 

In the last analysis the power of music is 
spiritual. The manner of its working makes 
large use of the emotional, but back of all it 
is a spiritual dynamic, influencing supremely 
the spiritual side of human nature. Its deal- 
ing, in the discharge of its chief mission, is 
with men’s souls. It is fertile in spiritual 
results for the reason that it is a spiritual 
156 


MUSIC AND THE EELIGIOUS LIFE 


cause. Carlyle said: ‘‘Who is there that in 
logical words can express the effect of music 
on us ? A kind of inarticulate, unfathomable 
speech, which leads us to the edge of the In- 
finite, and lets us for moments gaze into 
that?’^ WIio can fail to sense the divine 
presence in the singing of Heberts hymn? 

“Holy, holy, holy. Lord God Almighty! 

Early in the morning our song shall rise to 
Thee; 

Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty, 

God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity. 

“Holy, holy, holy! all the saints adore Thee, 

Casting down their golden crowns around the 
glassy sea; 

Cherubim and seraphim falling down before 
Thee, 

Which wert, and art, and evermore shall be.” 

Who can refuse to be led to “the edge of 
the Infinite” by the assuring lines of William 
Cowper? 

“Jesus, wherever Thy people meet. 

There they behold Thy mercy seat; 
Where’er they seek Thee Thou art found, 

And every place is hallowed ground. 

157 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

‘‘Here may we prove the power of prayer 
To strengthen faith and sweeten care; 

To teach our faint desires to rise, 

And bring all heaven before our eyes.’’ 

Who can gaze upon the Infinite without the 
assurance of faith, as he sings with Philip 
Doddridge his confiding trust? 

“How gentle God’s commands! 

How kind His precepts are! 

Come, cast your burdens on the Lord, 

And trust His constant care. 

“Beneath His watchful eye 
His saints securely dwell; 

That hand which bears all nature up 
Shall guard His children well.” 

Who can meditate upon Bernard’s cheering 
thought without a deepening devotion? 

“Jesus, the very thought of Thee 
With sweetness fills the breast; 

But sweeter far Thy face to see 
And in Thy presence rest. 

Nor voice can sing, nor heart can frame. 

Nor can the memory find 
A sweeter sound than Thy blest name, 

0 Savior of mankind!” 

158 


MUSIC AND THE EELIGIOUS LIFE 


Who can fail to appreciate the spiritual 
vision of the blind Fanny Crosby? 

“0, the soul-thrilling rapture, 
iWhen I view His blessed face!’’ 

WTio would not feel devout and thankful in 
the sharing of Toplady’s confidence that over 
against human helplessness are the divine 
resources? 

‘‘Kock of Ages, cleft for me. 

Let me hide myself in Thee; 

Let the water and the blood, 

From Thy wounded side which flowed, 

Be of sin the double cure. 

Save from wrath and make me pure. 

Could my tears forever flow. 

Could my zeal no languor know, 

These for sin could not atone ; 

Thou must save, and Thou alone; 

In my hand no price I bring; 

Simply to Thy cross I cling.” 

■Who does not feel Jesus near amid the stress 
and storms .of life as he sings the gospel of 
Charles Wesley? 


159 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

‘‘Jesus, Lover of my soul, 

Let me to Thy bosom fly, 
iWTiile the nearer waters roll, 

"While the tempest still is high! 

Hide me, 0 my Savior, hide. 

Till the storm of life is past; 

Safe into the haven guide, 

0 receive my soul at last! 

“Plenteous grace with Thee is found, 

Grace to cover all my sin: 

Let the healing streams abound; 

Make and keep me pure within. 

Thou of life the fountain art. 

Freely let me take of Thee; 

Spring Thou up within my heart, 

Kise to all eternity.’’ 

Who can sing from the heart Charlotte El- 
liotUs hymn and not know God in the for- 
giveness of sin! 

“Just as I am, without one plea. 

But that Thy blood was shed for me, 

And that Thou bidd’st me come to Thee, 

0 Lamb of God, I come!” 

Who would attempt to set a bound to the 
spiritual power of such a soul-stirring hymn 
as that of Isaac Watts! 

160 


MUSIC AND THE EELIGIOUS LIFE 


Jesus shall reign where’er the sun 
Does his successive journeys run; 

His Kingdom spread from shore to shore, 
Till moons shall wax and wane no more.” 

Full as good is his great Christmas hymn, 
^‘Joy to the world,’’ that closes with the 
lofty strain: 

‘^He rules the world with truth and grace, 
And makes the nations prove 
The glories of His righteousness 
And wonders of His love.” 

Who does not grow strong in the battle with 
sin as he enters into the spirit of Faber’s 
mighty truth? 

Eight is right, since God is God, 

And right the day must win; 

To doubt would be disloyalty. 

To falter would be sin.” 

Who can even listen to the great swinging 
lines of Julia Ward Howe without seeing the 
vision splendid in the triumphs of our Christ? 

‘‘Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of 
the Lord.” 


11 


161 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

Who is not strengthened and impelled for- 
ward by Duffield’s great hymn, inspired by 
the dying words of Dudley Tyng, ‘ ‘ Tell them 
to stand up for Jesus U’ 

“Stand up, stand up for Jesus! 

Ye soldiers of the cross; 

Lift high His royal banner, 

It must not suffer loss: 

From victory unto victory 
His army shall He lead, 

Till every foe is vanquished 
And Christ is Lord indeed/’ 

Music is a spiritual power that lives on 
through the years in the continuance of its 
work. The singer may forget and be for- 
gotten, but the song lives. 

“I shot an arrow into the air; 

It fell to the earth, I knew not where; 

For, so swiftly it flew, the sight 

Could not follow it in its flight. 

“I breathed a song into the air; 

It fell to the earth, I knew not where; 

For who has sight so keen and strong 

That it can follow the flight of song? 

162 


MUSIC AND THE RELIGIOUS LIFE 


‘‘Long, long afterward, in an oak 
I found the arrow, still unbroke; 

And the song, from beginning to end, 

I found again in the heart of a friend. ’ ’ 

— Longfellow. 

May we not venture to believe that music 
shall live through the eternal years? If es- 
sential in man, fundamental in God, and per- 
sistent in endurance, what wonder that it is 
adapted to the thought of immortality? It 
has been called the heavenly art. As we have 
listened to some great master it has seemed 
to us like heaven to the heart. Browning 
speaks of it as 

“Music, which is earnest of a heaven. 

Seeing we know emotions strange by it. 
Not else to be revealed.’’ 

Gounod has said, “It gives a foretaste of 
the immateriality of the future life.” The 
heavenly life is by its very nature the expres- 
sion of spiritual harmonies. It is suggested 
that music will be a chief means of inter- 
course in heaven. Some one has asked, 
“Lord, what music hast Thou provided for 
the saints in heaven, when Thou affordest 
163 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

bad men such music of earth?’’ Faber an- 
swers, 

‘‘But I guess by the stir of this music 
What raptures in heaven can be, 

Where the sound is the marvelous stillness, 
And the music is light out of Thee.” 

Here blinding tears temper our song. But 
“amid the graves that gape to swallow up 
our loves we rejoice in that undying love 
which shall knit all raveled friendships up 
and make whole the rents of time.” In the 
joy and light of His presence, beside the crys- 
tal sea, before the throne of the Eternal, 
there will be perfect music. 

“0 day for which Creation 

And all its tribes were made! 

0 joy for all the former woes 
A thousand-fold repaid!” 

Methinks on that day of days we ’ll gather 
about the throne and sing “Coronation.” 
Perchance we are only in training here that 
one day we may blend our voices in the per- 
fect music of the skies. Listen! the mighty 
symphonies, the great celestial chorus, doing 
164 


MUSIC AND THE EELIGIOUS LIFE 


homag'e unto Him, who has ‘^seen of the 
travail of His soul, and is satisfied.’’ Heaf 
them sing: 

“All hail the power of Jesus’ name! 

Let angels prostrate fall; 

Bring forth the royal diadem 
And crown Him Lord of all.” 

Here are the Jews, who have seen at last, in 
the suffering and crucified Jesus, Israel’s 
Messiah. Hear their great swelling anthem 
of solemn praise as, bowing before the King 
of kings and Lord of lords, they cry, 

“Ye chosen seed of Israel’s race, 

Ye ransomed from the fall, 

Hail Him who saves you by His grac6, 
And crown Him Lord of all.” 

All about the throne is the vast Gentile mul- 
titude. They have come up out of great trib- 
ulation, their garments white, washed in the 
blood of the Lamb. Their name is Legion, 
and methinks I hear them sing with one ac- 
cord until all heaven echoes with the joyful 
sound: 


165 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 


‘‘Sinners whose love can ne’er forget 
The wormwood and the gall; 

Go, spread your trophies at His feet, 

And crown Him Lord of all.” 

But here there is “every kindred, every 
tribe,” and yet one people, for “God hath 
made of one blood all the nations of the 
earth.” “There is neither Greek nor Jew, 
circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, 
Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is all 
and in all.” Methinks the great Head of the 
Church is jubilant in the answer to His 
prayer that ‘ ‘ they all may be one. ’ ’ And the 
united, harmonious, heavenly music is every- 
where, rising in incense of praise from a 
multitude whom no man can number. 

“Now as with this the sacred throng, 

We at His feet do fall. 

We join the everlasting song, 

And crown Him Lord of all.” 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 

God and Music. — Edwards. 

Hymn Treasures. — Everett. 

The Appreciation of Music . — Mason and Burette. 
Songs and Song-Writers. — Finch. 

166 


MUSIC AND THE EELIGIOUS LIFE 


The Beautiful in Music. — Hanslick. 

How Music Developed. — Henderson. 

The Organ, Its History and Construction. — Hop- 
kins. 

The Great in Music. — Matthews. 

Student’s History of Music. — Bitter. 

History of Music. — Bowhotham. 

Music and Musicians. — Schumann. 

Famous Composers and Their Works. — Paine. 
The Magnetism of the Cross. — Swift. 

The Beauty of Jesus. — Elliott. 

The Royalty of Jesus. — Luccock. 

The Practice of Self-Culture. — Black. 

Christ in the Centuries. — Fairhairn. 

The Divine Origin of Christianity. — Storrs. 
Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation. — Walker. 
The Story of the Psalms. — Van Dyke. 

Heroes and Hero Worship. — Carlyle. 

The Young Man and Himself. — Kirtley. 

The Play of Man. — Groos. 

The Institutional Church. — Judson. 

The Ripening Experiences of Life. — Kelley. 
Religion and Experience. — Brierley. 

Courtship of Miles Standish. — Longfellow. 
Anecdotes. — Moody. 

The Building of the Church. — Jefferson. 

Correct Social Usage, Vol. II. 

The Assurance of Faith. — Guth. 


167 


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The Religious Element in Literature 


‘ ‘ Give attendance to reading. ’ ’ 1 Timothy 4 ; 13. 

“Whatsoever things are trne, whatsoever things 
are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever 
things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, what- 
soever things are of good report; if there be any 
virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these 
things. ’ ’ Philippians 4 : 8. 


THE EELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN 
LITERATURE 


** Books written when the soul is at springtide, 
When it is laden like a groaning sky 
Before a thunderstorm. They are power and 
gladness, 

And majesty, and beauty. They seize the reader 
As tempests seize a ship, and bear him on 
With a wild joy. Some books are drenched sands 
On which a great souLs wealth lies all in heaps 
Like a wrecked argosy’s. What power in books ! 
They mingle gloom and splendor as I ’ve oft 
In thunderous sunsets seen the thunder-piles 
Seamed with dull fire, and fiercest glory-rents. 
They awe me to my knees as if I stood 
In presence of a king. They give me tears.” 

Reading, whether good or bad, is a potent 
factor in character-building. The springs of 
thought are the fountains of life. Reading is 
a main source of thought, and thought is the 
mainspring to action. To translate great 
literature back into life is the only way to 
read it. 


171 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

God is a living Voice, and literature is 
one of the channels through which He speaks 
His message of to-day. As a revelation it 
is quite inadequate, but it is ofttimes truth, 
in a form that provokes thought and stirs the 
soul. Literature is permeated by the Gospel, 
to which it is largely indebted, both as a di- 
rect source and as a fountain of inspiration 
and of ideals in the experience and vision of 
its writers. Not only is there a religious ele- 
ment in litrature, but to that element much 
literature owes its existence and the genius 
that makes it great. 

The poets never soar so high as when 
they utter the notes of faith. Poetry leaps 
from the souPs heights of aspiration and 
depths of feeling. The highest and truest 
accuracy of impression, of history, and of 
truth are often attained, not by the word- 
grubbing scholar, nor by the expert in logic 
or science, but by the poet. Truth is not 
formal, but vital, and if the poePs version 
be not exact in detail, it may be true in spirit. 
Fact may be correctly stated in the fullest 
detail, and yet be false. The seer and the 
poet are needed to interpret life; for they 
172 


THE EELIGIOUS ELEMENT 

get to tlie heart of an incident when others 
are only fumbling at the fringe. The highest 
truths are not reached by analysis, and the 
deepest appeal is not made to logic. The 
life and meaning and flavor and vital breath 
elude prosaic methods.” We are compelled 
to fall back upon the imagination and its 
products; namely, the creative arts: paint- 
ing, music, and poetry. 

The poet is prophet; he is seer in the 
field of literature. Bishop Quayle in his own 
inimitable way has put it well: ‘‘The poet 
sees. The poet sees the stars and the flush 
on cheek of woman or of cloud, and the dim 
violet and Indian summer and hooting owl, 
though he hides in shadows, and the corn- 
fields, and the marshes by the sea, and the 
‘flower in the crannied wall,’ and the di- 
shevelment of the old ocean, and the pomp 
of autumn, and the needs of men and their 
hungers and their thirsts, and their trials 
and their bitterness, and their upleaps and 
their downfalls^ — sees men and things, and 
fates and futures. Know you anything the 
poets have not seen? Goethe saw, though 
he knew not that he saw it, that sin was its 


THE QUEST OF. TEUTH 

own Nemesis. That is ^ Faust.’ Tennyson 
saw that environment as the explanatory 
clause of life was frivolous, and wrote the 
Hdylls of the King.’ Wordsworth saw the 
hills and Eydal Water, and learned the won- 
der of them by heart; and some of us have 
loved him for the thing he did, and shall 
love him all our days. In a vile age Edmund 
Spencer saw that virtue alone was beautiful, 
and wrote ‘The Faerie Queene,’ than which 
no sweeter proclamation has ever been made 
of the white beauty of truth and goodness 
save by Jesus only. One of the elect spirits 
of the world, who had kept his life white, a 
devotee of duty, who had been in elbow touch 
with England’s greatest ruler, Oliver Crom- 
well, who, when he saw the Puritan defeated, 
not by arms — the cavalier could not do that — 
but for the insane hunger for a king, when 
his blindness made his life a starless night, 
yet not so dark he could not see great Crom- 
well exhumed and hung on high for villainy 
to laugh at, when himself thought each step 
coming to his impoverished door was an offi- 
cer’s step which meant his arrest, then he 
gloomed his great soul in the tragedy of 
174 


THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT 

^Paradise Lost.’ He housed all the Puritan 
failure in that gloomy, glorious house, but 
came to his larger self once more and strove 
to write ^Paradise Regained,’ which should 
in reason have blazed in glory, but did not. 
He could not so rise from eclipse. Those 
poems are the story of a great spirit in 
eclipse, struggling yet to trample the dark- 
ness down and stumble into light. Chaucer 
is a man who sees and enjoys his world, and 
in him is a lusty love of life much worthier 
than the feminine view of life sometimes af- 
forded us. Bryant is the poet of outdoors; 
and we are outdoor folk. Longfellow is the 
poet of indoors and twilights and the light- 
ing of the lamp; and there are indoor folk 
to whom ministers must minister. Poe is a 
poet of intoxicants, and lives in a weird 
world, which we must look full in the face 
as men. Whittier is the man in love with 
goodness, and at one with God, and sure of 
the eternal boundaries of the homeland of 
the soul. Lowell is the scholar breaking into 
life. Bums is a man blurting out his weak- 
nesses and woes, and, like a selfishness he 
was, bringing himself uppermost at every 
175 


THE QUEST OF THUTH 

breath, and yet a man whose words had bird- 
song in them; and songs of birds are worth 
more than gold to a roomy life. Dante was 
sure of retribution, unless pardon stepped in 
for a souFs release. Sophocles is crushed 
with a sense of something outside ourselves 
which makes our lives. But enough is said to 
justify my words, ‘The poet sees.’ Having 
eyes, he uses them, which is quite the reverse 
of most men and women. Among them, they 
have missed nothing. They have hit all the 
keys having music in them. They have gone 
wherever life has gone, or nature, or God. 
Poets have been or seen or experienced the 
round of life. To be with such sightseers is 
to fill the soul with windows open on every 
street the wide world has.” 

Modem literature is the herald of a new 
prophetism. Originally the priest was not 
only the intercessor, but also the teacher. 
Then there came an era of marked degen- 
eracy in the time of the Judges. To meet 
the need of the hour God sent His prophets. 
In later times the theologian and the eccle- 
siastic became wedded to the formal creed 
and balanced statement, while the spirit was 
176 


THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT 

left to wither and die. As the exponent of 
vital truth, throbbing with the energetic 
pulse-beat of life, God gave to the world the 
‘ ^ new prophetism in modem literature. ’ ’ To- 
day the higher tmths of theology and the 
transcendental philosophies which touch the 
very core of religion are illuminated in poetry 
and stately verse. While the issues between 
Christianity and infidelity, and, indeed, the 
debatable phases of Christianity itself, are 
transferred to fiction. The very people who 
cry out against doctrinal subjects in the 
pulpit are devouring with enthusiasm Mrs. 
Humphrey Ward’s ‘‘Robert Elsmere’^ and 
George MacDonald’s “David Elginbrod” 
and “Robert Falconer.” Behold yonder at 
Weimar a statue of Goethe and Schiller. 
Goethe stands with his arm extended as 
though to command the world. Schiller, who, 
as a critc said, always ended among the stars, 
has his eyes lifted up to heaven. “This 
statue may be taken as a symbol in bronze 
of the twofold position of the new prophet- 
ism. It contemplates the subordination of 
the world to the spiritual ideals of the gos- 
pel, and it is searching in the heights of the 

12 177 


THE QUEST OF. TRUTH 

unseen universe for fresh disclosures of the 
infinite mystery. Thus it has a hand toward 
the earth and eyes toward heaven, and is in 
reality promoting the union of the human 
with the divine.’’ 

Is the new prophet and modem literature 
inspired? In so far as it is tme and truly 
great, yes; in the sense in which all human 
products in word or deed that find their im- 
pulse and measure in Spirit-led genius are 
inspired. Ho ; in the sense in which the Bible 
is inspired as being the original and infallible 
guide in all matters of moral standard, sal- 
vation, and destiny, and as involving a rev- 
elation adequate to human need, reaching be- 
yond the utmost grasp of the most exalted 
genius and the vision of the most spiritual 
man into mysteries of tmth, the knowing of 
which is only possible in a special dispensa- 
tion of supernatural illumination. All of this 
talk about Shakespeare or Browning being 
as much inspired as the Bible is mere non- 
sense, evidencing a lack of discrimination, 
and does well nigh as much injustice to lit- 
erature as to the Bible. The religious worth 
178 


THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT 


and service of literature is, nevertheless, 
very great. 

The spiritual element in earlier literature 
is only occasional. We see glimpses of it in 
the tragic productions of ^schylus, Soph- 
ocles, and Euripides, in the admonitions and 
dreams of Piers Plowman, in the Utopia of 
Sir Thomas More, and in the apocalyptic 
poems of Dante. 

In Shakespeare the religious element is 
more pronounced. The supernatural world 
haunts the steps of Macbeth and Hamlet. 
Hamlet thinks the spirit world has risen up 
against him as he sees the ghost enter. 

‘‘Angels and ministers of grace, defend us! 

Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damn’d. 
Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from 
hell, 

Be thy intents wicked or charitable, 

Thou comest in such a questionable shape 
That I will speak to thee ! I ’ll call thee, Hamlet, 
King, Father, royal Dane ; 0 answer me. 

Let me not burst in ignorance 1 but tell 
Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, 
Have burst their cerements ! why the sepulcher, 
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn ’d, 

179 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

Hath ope’d his ponderous and marble jaws, 

To cast thee up again ! what may this mean, 

That thou, dead corpse, again, in complete steel, 
Revisit ’st thus the glimpses of the moon. 
Making night hideous . . . 

Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we 
do?^’ 

Conscience asserts itself with relentless sting. 
Lady Macbeth utters, without relief, her 
shrieking cry: 

‘‘Here ’s the smell of blood still; 

All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this 
little hand. 

Oh! Oh! Oh!’’ 

In “Hamlet” the queen says to Horatio: 

“To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is. 

Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss; 
So full of artless jealousy is guilt, 

It spills itself, in fearing to be spilt.” 

Quayle calls Hamlet the profoundest study 
literature has produced of the soul longing 
for divine verities. The moral world is ap- 
parent in the fate of Shylock, lago, and 
Richard. The human world, in both its lit- 
tleness and greatness, appears in the Henrys, 
180 


THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT 

the Woolseys, the Hotspurs, the Falstaffs, 
Kathrines, Audreys, and Lears. Shake- 
speare has been called ‘Ghis world’s poet.” 
‘‘He knew the soul, and walked around 
through it as a man walks through a familiar 
street risking no hurt, because he knows the 
way so well. You get to know manhood and 
womanhood in Shakespeare. He shows the 
thing rather than tells it. Coarseness of na- 
ture, fineness of nature, intense thought, lack 
of any thought, honor of dubitative cast, and 
honor which has no lack, the simpleton, the 
maniac, the conceited donkey of two legs, 
the asininity of drunkenness, the Nemesis of 
courses of sin, the hellishness of sin-mixed 
genius, the dolt and the genius, the gentle- 
men and the libidinous beast miscalled a 
man, the differentiation of vice in individual 
makeup, the clarity of virtue, especially in 
women” — ^these and more make Shakespeare 
the master of human nature, the psychologist 
of the soul. He penetrates deeply into life 
and wrestles with the problems of life and 
of conscience from the viewpoint of spirit, 
and yet he is not spiritual, in the sense, for 
instance, in which Tennyson is spiritual. He 
181 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

can express and shape, as can no other, life’s 
tragedies, but he has no Enoch Arden’s 
prayer to relieve the scene. 

In modern or nineteenth-century litera- 
ture the spiritual element is predominant. 
This is true both of German and of English 
literature. In Germany we find the transcen- 
dental philosophers, Kant, Fichte, and Schel- 
ling, whose contribution to religion is scarcely 
less than that to literature and philosophy. 

The very essence of Jean Paul Richter’s 
message is religious. He is a devout soul, 
with exalted religious aspirations and a spir- 
ituality untrammeled by the narrowness of 
inflexible creeds. He says, ‘ ‘ The best Chris- 
tian religious doctrine is the life of Christ; 
and after that the sufferings and death of 
His followers, even those not related in Holy 
Writ.” He had a keen sense of God, and 
believed implicitly in Infinite Goodness at 
the heart of things. His words are signifi- 
cant and breathe the atmosphere of faith: 
‘‘I walked silently through little hamlets 
and close by their outer churchyards, where 
crumbling coffin-boards were glimmering, 
while the once bright eyes that had lain in 
182 


THE EELIGIOUS ELEMENT 


tLein were molding into gray asLes. Cold 
thought! Clutch not like a cold scepter at 
my heart. I look up to the starry sky, and 
an everlasting chain stretches thither and 
over and below; and all is warmth and light, 
and all is godlike or God.’’ 

Schiller gives expression to an idealism 
bom of the divine. His constant lamentation 
is that he can not clutch the stars. 

‘‘This space between the ideal of man’s soul 

And man’s achievement, who hath ever past? 

An ocean spreads between us and that goal 
Where anchor ne’er was cast.” 

His creed compasses human freedom, moral 
righteousness, and a God by whom all things 
are ordered in the fulfillment of a sublime 
purpose. 

“Man is made free! Man by birthright is free, 
Though tyrant may deem him but bom for his 
tool. 

Whatever the shout of the rabble may be — 
Whatever the ranting misuse of the fool — 

Still fear not the slave, when he breaks from his 
chain, 

For a man made a freeman grows safe in his 
gain. 


183 


THE QUEST OF. TEUTH 

‘‘And virtue is more than a shade or a sound, 
And man may her voice in his being obey ; 

And though ever he slip on the stony ground, 
Yet ever again to the godlike way. 

To the science of Good, though the wise may be 
blind. 

Yet the practice is plain to the childlike mind. 

“And a God there is! over space and time 

[WTiile the human will rocks, like a reed to and 
fro. 

Lives the Will of the Holy — a purpose sublime, 

A thought woven over creation below; 

Changing and shifting the All we inherit. 

But changeless through one Immutable Spirit. 

Goethe hardly classes with these others as 
a Christian seer, and yet beyond all his skep- 
ticism he pays the tribute of his genius to 
the imperishable beauty of the spiritual. 

French literature gives us only an occa- 
sional gem in which the religious element is 
pronounced. Perhaps the best illustration 
of this is Hugo’s “Les Miserables.” Here 
we have presented in most graphic style the 
“battle of the angels and the demons for 
man’s soul.” The author tells the story of 
“how Jean Valjean was recovered from pas- 
184 


THE EELIGIOUS ELEMENT 


sion and sin to Christian service and self- 
sacrifice.’’ 

Modem English literature is a mine of 
religious truth. Its treasures are every- 
where. Even writers like Matthew Arnold, 
Shelley, and Byron are not without religious 
worth, although their light shines dimly in 
comparison with others. 

Arnold was always appealing to conduct 
to determine what is true. ‘‘Conduct,” he 
said, “is three-fourths of life.” He had a 
fine mental integrity, and demonstrated the 
utter failure of his Greek solution of the 
human problem. If his poetry and life teach 
anything, they assure us that Jesus, as the 
revelation of God in man, alone adequately 
meets and answers man’s problem. His ex- 
cursions into rationalism only seem to deepen 
within us the necessity for a faith that 
reaches farther than his own. He is on the 
way to a deeper faith, and his negatives im- 
ply positives. 

Similar in a way is Shelley. He has been 
called “the poet of the unsatisfied.” He 
pours out his grief like one whose earth 
lacks a sky. He who stands beside the grave 
185 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

without hope is indeed a poor comforter. 
Shelley’s outlook is much like that of Gray. 
In Gray’s ‘‘Elegy in a Country Churchyard” 
we read, “All things end.” In striking con- 
trast is Milton’s “Lycidas.” Here we read, 
“To-day dies, but to-morrow dawns.” 

Byron, in his “Prisoner of Chillon,” 
teaches “the Christian’s debt to the past.” 
The prisoner is one who suffers for the faith 
of his fathers. Helpless, he sees his brother 
die, and then, at last, with superhuman 
power he breaks the chain. He finds him 
not, for only the body of his loved one lies 
cold before him. He sinks to the floor in a 
dazed condition. Nothing remains but the 
faith of his fathers. Then he hears the sweet 
carol of a bird, and the gracious minstrel of 
song cheers his life until at last he is set at 
liberty. The prisoner passes through cruel 
oppression and survives the most loathsome 
environment, and in so doing he preserves 
to future generations the blameless and virile 
faith of the fathers. 

In striking contrast to a picture so ter- 
rible as that of Byron is that of the parson 
in the “Heserted Village,” by Goldsmith, 
186 


THE EELIGIOUS ELEMENT 


who, however, slightly precedes the nine- 
teenth century. Goldsmith has a message for 
our day ; for now, as then, the perils of citi- 
zenship are wealth, greed, and graft. 

“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates and men decay. 
Princes and lords may flourish or may fade — 

A breath can make them as a breath has made — 
But the bold peasantry, a country’s pride. 
When once destroyed can never be supplied.” 

The leaven against all such conditions is the 
saintly character represented in the village 
parson. He stands forth as an example of 
the needful virtues and as a moral and spir- 
itual leader. This man of absolute integrity 
and of every sterling quality is probably 
Goldsmith’s father, idealized in the love and 
admiration of the poet. It is like the case 
of the mother painted by Lew Wallace in 
“Ben Hur.” It is said that Wallace’s step- 
mother read the story at his request. When 
he asked her how she liked it she praised it 
highly, especially the character of the mother. 
“Son,” she said, “how in the world did you 
get your conception of a mother like that?” 
187 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 


He answered, ‘^Mother, do nT yon know it is 
a picture of your own dear selfU’ Through 
the influence of saintly character in her citi- 
zenship the village is safe, and gives evi- 
dence of new hope and life. A man cross- 
ing the ocean was much alarmed, and in the 
midst of a storm said to the captain, ^‘Cap, 
can we weather it ? ^ ’ He replied : ‘ ^ Put your 
ear to that tube. Down there is the chief 
engineer, and he believes in me. I ’m up 
here, and I believe in him. I rather guess 
we dl ride this blow out.^’ The traveler 
was satisfied. So ^^when God can point to 
a man down here and say, ‘There is a man 
I believe in,’ and that man can point up 
and say, ‘There is a God I believe in,’ ” the 
village is safe, and the Ship of State will 
outride the roughest storm. 

Another safeguard to our civilization is 
that represented in “The Cotter’s Saturday 
Night,” by Robert Bums, who also just pre- 
cedes the dawn of the nineteenth century. 
The members of the family gather home, on 
a Saturday night, after the toil and separa- 
tion of the week. They are having a real 
visit, talking over together their experiences, 
188 


THE EELIGIOUS ELEMENT 


when a rap at the door brightens the sparkle 
in Jennie ^s eye. It is the coming of her 
lover. He joins the circle, where love, laugh- 
ter, and good nature hold sway. The father 
enters into the merriment, but incidentally 
takes occasion to offer a bit of counsel: 

‘‘Be sure to fear the Lord alway — 

Lest in temptation’s path ye gang astray. 
Implore His counsel and assisting might; 
They never sought in vain who sought the Lord 
aright. ’ ’ 

The supper is ready, and is partaken of with 
much joy. When it is over, family and guest 
hear the father say, “Let us worship God.” 
Bums makes this the climax of the scene, 
and portrays it thus: 

“Then kneeling down, to heaven’s Eternal King 
The saint, the father, and the husband prays; 
Hope springs exulting on triumphant wing. 
That thus they all shall meet in future days; 
There ever bask in uncreated rays. 

No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear. 
Together hymning their Creator’s praise. 

In such society, yet still more dear; 

While circling time moves round in an eternal 
sphere. 


189 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 


‘^Compared with this, how poor religion’s pride, 
In all the pomp of method and of art, 

When men display to congregations wide 
Devotion’s every grace, except the heart! 

The power, incensed, the pageant will desert, 

The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole; 

But haply in some cottage far apart. 

May hear, well pleased, the language of the soul ; 
And in His Book of Life the inmates poor en- 
roll. 

‘^Then homeward all take off their several way; 
The youngling cottagers retire to rest ; 

The parent pair their secret homage pay, 

And proffer up to Heaven the warm request 
That He who stills the raven’s clamorous nest, 
And decks the lily fair in flowery pride, 

Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best. 
For them and for their little ones provide; 

But chiefly in their hearts with grace divine pre- 
side.” 

The lesson is clear. The poem puts the home 
at the center of affection and attention, but 
it is the home with religion at the hearth. 

^‘From scenes like these old Scotia’s grandeur 
springs. 

That makes her loved at home, revered abroad. ’ ’ 

‘‘God at the fireside” makes a nation strong. 
190 


THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT 


As a study in the ‘‘principles of charac- 
ter^^ one should give attention to John Bus- 
kin ’s “Seven Lamps of Architecture/’ re- 
garded as “interpreters of the seven laws 
of life.” Buskin is not only art-critic and 
social reformer, but teacher and preacher. 
He puts the law of truth at the foundation, 
associating with it certain other laws, and 
pleading for the simplicities of virtue and 
of homely every-day righteousness. He is 
“oft an apostle of gentle words that heal 
like medicines, and sometimes a prophet of 
Elijah-like sternness and grandeur, consum- 
ing man’s sins with words of flame.” 

Quayle says of George Eliot, “The large 
things she did, praise her; the larger thing 
she might have done, upbraids her.” One 
of the really large things she has done is 
the creation of the character Tito. “His 
versatile talent; his lack of moral stamina; 
his feeling his way toward crime as a bather 
into cold serf ; his base ingratitude, and the 
choice of ambition rather than rightness ; his 
fatal decision to make no search for his 
foster-father, the appropriation of his wealth, 
and the consequent denial of him returned, 
191 


THE QUEST OE TRUTH 

and Titovs murder by that much-injured man, 
— these constitute a study in ingratitude 
not often paralleled in power, and seldom 
equaled as a characterization.’’ Romola 
makes evident the peril of tampering with 
conscience, and the gradual deterioration of 
character that is certain to follow. Here is 
the tragic decline and fall of the soul. It 
is the sowing of the wind and the reaping of 
the whirlwind. It is the verification of Scrip- 
ture, ‘‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall 
he also reap.” 

Shelley has called Coleridge “the suhtle- 
souled psychologist.” Strange and weird, 
but full of the supernatural, is his great 
poem, “The Ancient Mariner.” When dis- 
aster came, after the shooting of the alba- 
tross, the form of a spirit haunted every 
corpse, and these spirit-beings of men sup- 
posed to be dead seemed to be tugging at 
the ropes. Greene considers the great les- 
son of the poem to be the nearness of the 
spirit world. Who knows but that spiritual 
forces are all about us at the behest of 
prayer! The world of spirit lies near at 


192 


THE EELIGIOUS ELEMENT 


Land, and divine aid can be bad for tbe 
asking. Only let man remember that 
‘^He prayeth best who loveth best 
All things both great and small; 

For the dear God who loveth us, 

He made and loveth all.’’ 

The three great names in English litera- 
ture, from the standpoint of the religious 
element, are Wordsworth, Tennyson, and 
Browning. When, at the close of the French 
Eevolution, faiths were being recklessly over- 
turned, it is refreshing to find a pure soul 
with penetrating insight and lofty spiritual 
vision like that of Wordsworth. We note in 
him an evident consciousness of God and a 
manifest faith. Here is one who was called 
of God to be a prophet. He comes trailing 
‘‘clouds of glory’’ in his song. He writes 
of God, of nature, and of man; of their fel- 
lowships and harmonies, their interblending 
and reciprocal relations. To him nature is 
a living thing, or series of correlated things ; 
it feels the life of God, it communes with 
man. With Wordsworth this is not panthe- 
ism, nor yet a mere mechanical principle, 
but an immanent-transcendent God. 

193 


13 


THE QUEST OF. TRUTH 

‘‘And I have felt 

A presence that disturbs me with the Joy 
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
"Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 

And the round ocean, and the living air. 

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 

A motion and a spirit, that impels 

All thinking things, all objects of all thought. 

And rolls through all things.” 

God is to him the Wisdom and the Spirit of 
the universe. 

“Thou soul that art the Eternity of thought. 

And givest to forms and images a breath. 

And everlasting motion ; not in vain, 

By day or starlight, thus from my first dawn 
Of childhood didst Thou intertwine for me 
The passions which build up our human soul.” 

He represents the little child as hearing the 
ocean’s murmurings in the shell, and it sug- 
gests to him the voice of God in the universe 
speaking into the ear of faith. 

“Even such a shell the universe itself 
Is to the ear of faith ; and there are times, 

I doubt not, when to you it doth impart 

194 


THE EELIGIOIJS ELEMENT 

Authentic tidings of Invisible things; 

Of ebb and flow, and ever-enduring power; 
And central peace, subsisting at the heart 
Of endless agitation.” 

He writes of the herdman on a lonely moun- 
tain top as feeling and seeing the things of 
faith in his converse with nature. 

‘‘Early had he learned 
To reverence the volume that displays 
The mystery, the life that can not die; 

But in the mountains did he feel his faith. 

All things responsive to the writing, there 
Breathed immortality, revolving life 
And greatness still revolving, infinite ; 

There littleness was not ; the least of things 
Seemed infinite ; and there his spirit shaped 
Her prospects, nor did he believe — ^he saw.” 

His vision scans the life immortal and sets 
it near, within the distance of a moment. 

“Hence in a season of calm weather 
Though inland far we he, 

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
Which brought us hither; 

Can in a moment travel thither, 

And see the children sport upon the shore 
And hear the mighty waters rolling ever- 
more.’’ 

195 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

Tennyson is rightly styled ‘Hlie master 
of all the niceties of the poeUs art.’’ The 
extent and the success with which he gives 
himself to the unfolding of Christian truth 
has been a matter of some debate. It is 
true that he gives musical expression to our 
doubts and fears, our perplexity in the face 
of evil, and to our crying in the darkness 
for the light. But it is also true that Ten- 
nyson was profoundly religious, and has 
sounded some deep and wholesome notes in 
a time of much intellectual confusion. He 
lived in an age of psychological investigation 
and scientific criticism. It was a time of 
transition, when it fared ill with ancient 
creeds. Tennyson entered into the spirit of 
his age, but he kept his faith. He ‘‘fought 
his doubts, and gathered strength.” Al- 
ready science had established new relations 
among old truths. Tennyson, together with 
Browning, has done much to help us to see 
the significance of these new relations and 
of newly-found truths to religious thought 
and spiritual life. He has promoted philo- 
sophical insight into the relations of nature 
196 


THE EELIGIOUS ELEMENT 


and man with God. He loved nature, and 
because he trusted God he was not afraid 

“To rest beneath the clover sod, 

That takes the sunshine and the rains, 

Or where the kneeling hamlet drains 
The chalice of the grapes of God.’’ 

Prayer was to him “the highest aspiration 
of the soul,” a means by which work is done 
and the erring world is knit to the heart 
of God. 

“Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by 
prayer 

Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy 
voice 

Eise like a fountain for me night and day. 

For what are men better than sheep or goats 
That nourish a blind life within the brain. 

If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer 
Both for themselves and those who call theni 
friend ? 

For so the whole round earth is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.” 

The great item of his faith was his vision 
of God. It is easy for one to pray who feels 
that God is at his side. 

197i 


THE QUEST: OF TRUTH 

‘ ‘ Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with 
spirit can meet, 

Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than 
hands and feet.’’ 

He paid the tribute of his genius to Christ. 

‘ ‘ Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 

Whom we, that have not seen Thy face. 

By faith, and faith alone, embrace. 
Believing where we can not prove. 

Thine are these orbs of light and shade; 
Thou madest life in man and brute; 
Thou madest death ; and lo ! Thy foot 
Is on the skull which Thou hast made. 

“Thou wilt not leave us in the dust; 

Thou madest man, he knows not why ; 

He thinks he was not made to die ; 

And Thou hast made him ; Thou art just. 

“Thou seemest human and divine. 

The highest, holiest manhood. Thou; 

Our wills are ours, we know not how ; 

Our wills are ours to make them Thine. 

“Our little systems have their day; 

They have their day and cease to be; 
They are but broken lights of Thee, 

And Thou, 0 Lord, art more than they.” 
198 


THE EELIGIOUS ELEMENT 


Tennyson is tlie ‘‘poet of tlie endless life/^ 
He ntters the imperishable hopes and aspi- 
rations of the soul. He is not theological, 
like Milton or Wordsworth; nor philosoph- 
ical, like Arnold or Browning; hut he ap- 
proaches the ultimate spiritual instincts and 
cravings of humanity from the side of the 
feelings. To him the passion for immor- 
tality well-nigh precludes the possibility that 
death should end all. 

‘‘My own dim life should teach me this 
That life shall live for evermore, 

Else earth is darkness at the core, 

And dust and ashes all that is.’^ 

Tennyson once said, “The life after death, 
Lightfoot and I agreed, is the cardinal point 
of Christianity.^’ To him. 

“Death’s truer name 
Is ‘ Onward ! ’ no discordance in the roll 
And march of that eternal harmony 
Whereto the worlds beat time.” 

How truly Christian is the conception set 
forth in his line, 

“God’s finger touched him;, and he slept.” 

199 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 
How surpassing fair are those other lines: 

‘‘0 Sweet and strange, it seems to me, that ere this 
day is done 

The voice that now is speaking, may be beyond 
the sun — 

Forever and forever with those just souls and 
true — 

And what is life, that we should moan? why 
make we such ado? 

Forever and forever, all in a blessed home — 

And there to wait a little while till you and Effie 
come — 

To lie within the light of God, as I lie upon your 
breast — 

And the wicked cease from troubling, and the 
weary are at rest/’ 

What an expression of modest but assuring 
confidence in that personal song of the be- 
lieving soul! 

“Sunset and evening star. 

And one clear call for me! 

And may there be no moaning of the bar, 
When I put out to sea. 

200 


THE EELIGIOUS ELEMENT 


‘‘But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 

Too full for sound and foam, 

When that which drew from out the bound- 
less deep 

Turns home again. 

“Twilight and evening bell. 

And after that the dark! 

And may there be no sadness of farewell. 
When I embark. 

“For though from out our bourne of Time 
and Place 

The flood may bear me far, 

I hope to see my Pilot face to face 
When I have crossed the bar.” 

Faith in the life to come elevated and puri- 
fied Tennyson’s conception of the present 
life. It made for purity and beauty, and 
gave new meaning to duty and love. His 
own high moral qualities were fully equal 
to his artistic qualities. He has made good- 
ness beautiful to our eyes and desirable to 
our hearts, and has made it easier for us to 
be good. His “King Arthur” is an attempt 
to incarnate the precepts and love of Christ. 

201 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

^‘The Holy Grail’’ is one of the greatest in- 
dictments ever made ‘ ^ against a theatric 
form of religion, as a refuge for man when 
he has failed to obey the religion of duty 
and righteousness.” ^‘The dish once used 
at the Last Supper of Jesus with His dis- 
ciples, Joseph’s treasured last drop of blood 
which fell to him from Christ’s riven side, 
the sacramental efficacy 'of the Grail, are not 
of supreme worth compared with King Ar- 
thur’s devotion to common duties. As the 
whole epic moves toward a conclusion, we 
learn much. We learn that while heaven is 
attractive to religious souls, earth is the 
place to win heaven; that passionate purity 
alone may weave of a maiden’s hair a girdle 
for Galahad, the warrior, and he alone may 
win the sight of the Holy Grail, as did the 
nun, Percivale’s sister; that Galahad never 
retires from the world of duties and tasks; 
that, while Merlin may fear to sit in the 
chair where men lose themselves, Galahad 
cries, ^If I lose myself, I save myself.’ ” 
The glory of life is self-crucifixion at the 
impulse of love and in the ministry of serv- 
ice. This is the great lesson in Tennyson’s 
202 


THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT 

‘^Enocli Arden.’’ Three children are at 
play : Anna Lee, a most beautiful girl ; Philip 
Rae, the son of a miller; and Enoch Arden, 
the fatherless son of a shipwrecked sailor. 
As they grow up Enoch marries Anna, and 
Philip in the sadness of his heart leads a 
lonesome but useful life. Into the home 
there come children, and Enoch, desiring to 
do the best possible for his family, connects 
himself with a ship destined to a long voy- 
age in search of wealth. Shipwrecked on an 
island, his only companions die, and he is 
left alone. At last the ship Good Fortune 
comes that way, and Enoch returns home. 
But it was not home. Well nigh a dozen 
years had passed before Anna gave her 
word of assent to Philip to become his wife. 
Through all these years Anna had prayed 
and waited for his return, until the last hope 
that he was alive had vanished. Enoch, who 
through the years had prayed that her bur- 
den might be upon him, enters the old town 
to find everything changed. For love’s 
sweet sake he buries his grief and will not 
let her know that he is aliVe. Looking 
through the window, he sees another hus- 
203 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

band and father who lias taken liis place ; the 
sight staggers him, but in love for them he 
crucifies himself and goes away to bear the 
-agony alone, lest he shatter the happiness 
of that hearth. Only after his death will 
they know, and only then to give her com- 
fort in the clearing up of the mystery that 
had so long distressed her, and to let her 
know that to the end his love was pure and 
strong and true. This is life at its best, 
self hidden behind the cross; this is ‘‘enter- 
ing into the fellowship of His sutf erings. ’ ’ 
But how such love and utter annihilation of 
the selfish transfigures life with a glory that 
is divine! 

Robert Browning has been called “the 
poet^s poet.” In him the religious element 
is predominant. “I believe in God, in truth, 
in love, ’ ^ is the first article of his creed. He 
is inspired by revelation as well as by na- 
ture. He reflects the profoundest religious 
thought of his age, advancing to the central 
gospel conceptions of ChrisUs divinity and 
atoning sacrifice. He surpasses all other 
poets of his century in his study of man. 
His scope and range are vast, and the themes 
204 


THE EELIGIOUS ELEMENT 

with which he battles are nigged and vital 
problems. ‘‘He deals with divorce, mar- 
riage for position; with heredity, environ- 
ment, and the failure of both in both direc- 
tions; with sin as a palpable and monstrous 
fact, forgiveness, hypocrisy self-justified ; 
with the failure for the largest by the lack 
of deep feeling, the passion and power of 
music, the defect of the artistic tempera- 
ment; with motherhood, herohood, husband- 
hood, wifehood; with old age beautiful and 
beneficent, old age crabbed as gnarled wild 
crab-apples in early autumn ; with lust, schol- 
arship, humbuggery, intellect, the poet; with 
smirched virtue, conscience, conscienceless- 
ness; with love, bewilderment, life as a 
whole, with pain, temptation, duty; with un- 
known helpers of life, love above position, 
the moral sense ; with natural theology, 
Christ, belief in God; with triumphant op- 
timism, joy in life, longing, hope, and im- 
mortality.’’ “His soundings are deep, and 
stretch over wide areas of the sea of the 
soul. He dredges where he sounds.” His 
appeal, in search of truth, is to the whole 
man, intellect, heart, and will. 

205 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

He is perhaps not as musical in expres- 
sion as he is great and true in his concep- 
tion. Living in an age of over-refinement, 
he dared rugged strength. He has shown 
us that he could do some beautiful things 
when he wished to, hut he has chosen to 
teach the holiness of power, leaving it to 
Tennyson to teach the holiness of beauty. 
His power is in the realm of the spiritual. 
He rises to a sublime faith in God’s incar- 
nate love. He is distinctly and positively 
religious, and has deep insight into the soul. 
He is inspirational. He is saturated with 
the Christian spirit. In an age of doubt he is 

‘‘Very sure of God.” 

He is fortified in the fact that 

“God rules in His heaven, 

All ’s right in the world.” 

His God is the omnipresent, living God. 

“God . . . dwells in all, 

Prom life’s minute beginnings up at last 
To man — the consummation of this scheme 
Of being, the completion of this sphere 
Of life.” 


206 


THE EELIGIOUS ELEMENT 


In nature he sees a moral order, and beyond 
nature a holy God. 

trust in nature for the stable laws 
Of beauty and utility . . . 

I trust in God — ^the right shall be the right 
And other than the wrong while He endures.’’ 

His God is not only righteousness, but love. 

“For the loving worm within its clod 
[Were diviner than a loveless God 
Amid His worlds.” 

Love is enthroned in the universe. 

‘^This world no blot for us, 

Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good.” 

If the universe speaks not enough, then let 
Christ give thee light. 

‘H say the acknowledgment of God in Christ 
Accepted by thy reason solves for thee 
All questions in the earth and out of it.” 

He addresses Christ as One with whom he 
has had constant fellowship. 

‘^0 thou pale form! 

Oft have I stood by Thee — 

Have I been keeping lonely watch with Thee 
In the damp night weeping by Olivet, 

207 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

Or leaning on Thy bosom, proudly less, 

Or dying with Thee on the lonely cross. 

Or witnessing Thy bursting from the tomb/’ 

He speaks of Cbrist as 

“He who trod 
Very man and very God, 

The earth in weakness, shame and pain.” 

In speaking of conscience and the doing of 
the truth he says: 

“The worst man upon earth — 

Be sure he knows in his conscience more 
Of what right is, than arrives at birth 
In the best man’s acts that we bow before; 

This last knows better — true, but my fact is, 

’T is one thing to know, and another to practice. ’ ’ 

His explanation of temptation he gives in 
these words: 

“Why comes temptation, but for man to meet 
And master and make crouch beneath his feet, 
And so be pedestaled in triumph. Pray 
‘Lead us into no such temptations. Lord.’ 

Yea, but, 0 Thou whose servants are the bold. 
Lead such temptations by the head and hair, 
Keluctant dragons, up to who dares fight. 
That so he may do battle and have praise. ’ ’ 

208 


THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT 


To Browning life was fullness, and lie finds 
a wild joy in living. 

“Have you found your life distasteful? 

My life did and does smack sweet. 

Was your youth of pleasure wasteful? 

Mine I saved and hold complete. 

Do your joys with age diminish? 

When mine fail me I ’ll complain. 

Must in death your daylight finish? 

My sun sets to rise again.” 

Browning, too, is poet of immortality. • 

“All that is at all 
Lasts ever past recall; 

Earth changes, but my soul and God 
stand sure; 

What entered into thee, 

That was, is and shall be; 

Time’s wheel runs back or stops; potter 
and clay endure.” 

With sublime confidence he says: 

“Though I stoop 

Into a dark, tremendous sea of cloud. 

It is but for a time. I press God’s lamp 
Close to my breast ; its splendor, soon or late. 
Will pierce the gloom; 1 shall emerge some- 
where.” 


14 


209 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

Worthy to be placed by the side of Brown- 
ing’s best thought upon this subject are the 
words by his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Brown- 
ing: 

^‘Hearken! Hearken! 

God speaketh in thy soul, 

Saying, 0 thou that movest 
With feeble steps across this earth of Mine 
To break beside the fount thy golden bowl, 
And spill its purple wine. 

Look up to heaven and see how like a scroll 
My right hand hath thy immortality 
In an eternal grasping.’^ 

Perhaps Browning’s greatest creation, from 
the standpoint of the religious element, is 
his ‘‘Saul.” It is based upon the Bible ac- 
count of King Saul, found in 1 Samuel 16: 
14-23. Saul, once kingly and mighty, and 
filled with God’s Spirit, becomes disobedient 
and possessed of an evil spirit. To this man 
filled with melancholy and gloom, David the 
son of Jesse comes, filled with the Spirit 
of the Lord. His task is to awaken Saul and 
bring him back into the right way. Brown- 
ing not only recites poetically this narrative, 
but uses it as' a starting point for the truths 
210 


THE EELiaiOUS ELEMENT 


iie desires to teacli. Hillis makes the great 
lesson to be the tragedy of ten-talent men 
and, incidentally, their recovery. Bums, 
Byron, Poe, Bacon, De Quincy, and many 
others, are illustrations of the tragedies of 
greatness in the literary world. They have 
failed to realize that ‘‘as men go toward 
greatness they go toward responsibility.’^ 
They have done something, but only God 
knows what they might have done with the 
larger vision splendid, possible only to 
purity and goodness. Genius is the strong 
man’s peril. He may soar some and be sat- 
isfied, but it is forever tme that faults and 
sins clip the wings of his flight. 

Greene interprets Browning’s “Saul” as 
a message on the awakening of a soul. 
Abner, cousin of Saul, makes an address to 
David, and then David proceeds to his task. 
He prays, addresses the king, plays upon 
his harp, and now there is the first sign of 
life. Saul groans. Now David plays and 
sings, forgetting not to call up boyhood days 
and memories of parents, brothers, and 
friends. Then, like a resurrection call, with 
intensity he speaks the name of ‘’‘Saul.” 

211 


THE QUEST OP TRUTH 

He is aroused from Ms spiritual stupor, and 
David sings again, tMs time to sustain and 
strengtlien him. It is a song of the immor- 
tality of life and influence. Not only Saul, 
but David himself is transformed. David has 
tasted the sweets of service, and now there 
is joy in living. In his new Christian expe- 
rience even the face of nature seems new 
and strange and filled with a wild joy. Ah, 
there is nothing like it! Saul is blessed, 
David is blessed the more. ‘‘Browning’s 
‘Saul’ is a sermon on the greatness of life, 
and the goodness of God in projecting that 
life into eternity. Its practical message is 
that life is so valuable no one has a right 
to sink it into despair or mar it by sin. Yet, 
if a soul becomes lethargized, the best tonic 
for it is a true vision of life and God. 
Aroused by that vision, the soul recognizes 
the wild joy of its own existence, catches a 
glimpse of the divine love that created life 
with its joy, and rises to the sublime plane 
of faith in the eternal duration of that life. ’ ’ 
If we pass from English to American lit- 
erature we first find a group of writers who 
in the early part of the nineteenth century 
212 


THE EELIGIOUS ELEMENT 


laid the foundations of American literatnre. 
Longfellow, Emerson, Holmes, Lowell, and 
Hawthorne are bound together by their com- 
mon consciousness of the reality and worth 
of the moral quality in life, and their firm, 
sane belief in the beauty and power of right- 
eousness. 

What better could one ask for our time 
than the ideals held up by Longfellow in his 
poem to the village blacksmith? Who can 
read without pious devotion his poem to 
Christ, in which St. John is represented as 
speaking while he wanders over the face of 
the earth? 

Emerson weaves the outlines 'of tran- 
scendental ideals into the formulated state- 
ments of his own belief. His teachings have 
failed to be generally accepted on account 
of their disregard of those foundations on 
which human reason seeks to build religion. 
There is too much cloud effect, while denying 
that there is an ocean whence their substance 
has been derived. And yet in Emerson there 
is a magnificent abandon from all conven- 
tionality, and a pronounced religious spirit. 

The religious element permeates the 

213 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

works of Holmes, while it is even more ap- 
parent in the writings of Lowell. Take for 
instance Loweirs ‘‘Vision of Sir Launfal,’’ 
following Tennyson’s theme, the search for 
the Holy Grail. Sir Lannfal dashes forth 
on his quest, heedlessly passing a leper at 
the castle gate. Then there is a winter scene, 
of which Lannfal becomes a part, as he con- 
fronts the cold, wintry close of life without 
the success of his search. As an old man 
he goes forth from the castle and sees again 
a leper begging at the roadside. This time 
he opens his eyes to see the vision, and be- 
holds in the leper an image of the suffering 
Christ. As now in love he gives an alms, 
service becomes a sacrament, and a voice de- 
clares that he has found the Holy Grail in 
the spirit of his act. What Lowell would 
have him seek is not the cup, but that for 
which it stands: a Christlike ideal of life. 
In the finding of this he is transformed, and 
henceforth even his serfs are brethren. 

“The meanest serf on Sir Lannfal ’s land 
Has hall and bower at his command, 

And there ’s no poor man in the North Countree 
But is lord of the earldom as much as he.’’ 

214 


THE EELIGIOUS ELEMENT 


In Hawthorne’s ‘‘Scarlet Letter” we 
have a great story that preaches. It is a 
study of the retributive workings of con- 
science, and proclaims the “necessity and no- 
bility of repentance, and the confession of 
sin.” 

One conld learn also from Bryant, who, 
though leading a busy life as citizen and 
journalist, found time to sing with unwaver- 
ing Christian faith: 

‘ ‘ Sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant 
dreams.” 

Walt Whitman, too, has a message. He 
is the “poet of immortality.” 

“See ever so far, there is limitless space outside 
of that; 

Count ever so much, there is limitless time 
around that; 

My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain. 

My Lord will be there and wait till I come on 
perfect terms; 

The great Camarado, the lover true for whom: 
I pine will be there.” 

215 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

And tliere is WMttier, called ‘Hhe best 
loved of American poets. In bis own quiet 
way he is tender like Jeremiah, seraphic like 
Isaiah, and devoutly spiritual, while stand- 
ing for the freedom of the soul. Whittier is 
a seer. ‘^He catches the finer voice with 
which Grod’s Spirit whispers to the dull ear 
of the world. He inspires faith. He be- 
lieves in God as the inspiration and source 
of all love, and as the love-giver to all hu- 
manity. He sings : 

“Immortal love! forever full, 

Forever flowing free, 

Forever shared, forever whole, 

A never ebbing sea.^’ 

And again; 

“All is of God that is, and is to be; 

And God is good. Let this suffice us still. 
Resting in childlike trust upon His will 
Who moves to His great ends unthwarted by 
the ill. 


But still my human hands are weak 
To hold your iron creeds; 

Against the words ye bid me speak 
My heart within me pleads. 

216 


THE EELIGIOIJS ELEMENT 


Who fathoms the eternal thought? 

Wlio talks of scheme and plan? 

The Lord is God! He needeth not 
The poor device of man. 

I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground 
Ye tread with boldness shod ; 

I dare not fix with mete and bound 
The love and power of God. 


Not mine to look where cherubim 
And seraphs may not see. 

But nothing can be good in Him 
Which evil is in me.’’ 

He is conscious of sin in the world, but he 
turns from the problem of evil to the one 
sure thing, that God is good. 

‘H see the wrong that round me lies, 

I feel the guilt within, 

I hear with groans and travail-cries, 

The world confess its sin. 

‘‘Yet, in the maddening maze of things, 

And tossed by storm and fiood, 

To one fixed stake my spirit clings ; 

I know that God is good.” 


217 


THE QUEST OE TRUTH 


He sees the immortal life in the sonPs pres- 
ent relations with God. 

‘‘The solemn joy that soul-communion fiels 
Immortal life reveals; 

And human love its prophecy and sign, 
Interprets love divine.’’ 

He writes as though speaking to a departed 
loved one: 

“Come then, in thought, if that alone may be, 

0 friend! and bring with thee 

Thy calm assurance of transcendent spheres. 

And the eternal years.” 

He is very sure 

“That life is ever Lord of death 
And Love can never lose its own.” 

The neamess of unseen realms and of un- 
seen spiritual presences is to Whittier very 
real. He thinks the gates ajar between the 
seen and the unseen ; 

“0, sometimes comes to soul and sense 
A feeling that is^ evidence 
That very near about us lies 
The realm of spirit mysteries.” 

218 


THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT 
Of his gifted sister who had died he writes : 

‘‘I can not feel that thou art far 
Since near at hand the angels are; 

And when the sunset gates unbar 
Shall I not see thee waiting stand? 

And white against the evening star, 

The welcome of Thy beckoning hand?’’ 

But with all the charm of his faith in the 
heavenly world, to Whittier life looked good. 
It is very probably his own home that he is 
describing in ‘‘Snow-Bound/^ For two 
nights and days the storm had raged, and 
the scene is laid in the third night after the 
paths and tunnels have been made. He pre- 
sents the home scene, in that old-fashioned 
country home, with its open fireplace and 
all the rest. Two things he makes prominent ; 
first, the pastimes engaged in, and second, 
the characters who occupied the home. 
Through the wholesome pastimes, character 
is formed at the fireside. In our day we need 
to strive for the ideal home relations, such 
as are here represented. And then this pic- 
ture of the occupants ! Who can forget the 
father, who is the idol and ideal of his chil- 
219 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

dren; the mother, upon whose words the 
children hang with interest; the country 
school teacher, the good nncle, or that blessed, 
holy, noble woman, the old-maid annt, whom 
Whittier calls the 

‘‘Sweetest woman ever Pate 
Perverse denied a household mateT^ 

Literature is for life. It sees visions, 
dreams dreams, talks of heaven; but all this 
is to encourage, instruct, and inspire for the 
urgency of to-day’s need and opportunity. 
Indeed, no small portion of it strives di- 
rectly for a regenerated humanity and the 
new social order. The religious element in 
literature not only tends toward spiritual 
views, giving to us a theology of the poets, 
but touches life with the spirit of reform. 
The new prophetism in literature, like the 
old prophets, strikes hard for private and 
social righteousness and believes in the ulti- 
mate triumph of the human brotherhood. 

There is Carlyle, with his theological va- 
garies mostly due to a revolt from Calvin- 
ism. But the underlying note in Carlyle is 
the incalculable dignity of humanity. His 
220 


THE EELIGIOUS ELEMENT 


arraignment of wrongs is terrific. He Has 
reverence for Honest toil. 

THere, too, is Enskin. He is social re- 
former. He writes to preacH tHe Cross and 
self-denial. One day He nrges a lady of 
fasHion to try ‘‘God’s fashion occasionally,” 
and suggests that in planning Her next party 
she imagine Christ there. THe grotesque- 
ness in it all arises from the actual antago- 
nism of much in modem society to the spirit 
of Jesus. 

Markham champions the toiler and pic- 
tures “The Man with the Hoe.” 

‘ ‘ How will you ever straighten up this shape, 
Touch it again with immortality ; 

Give back the upward looking and the light ; 
Kebuild in it the music and the dreams ; 

Make right the immemorial infamies, 

Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?” 

Sidney Lanier hymns the burdens of the 
poor. 

“Yea, what avail the endless tale 
Of gain by cunning and plus by sale? 
Look up the land, look down the land. 

The poor, the poor, the poor, they stand 
Wedged by the pressing of Trade’s hand! 

2211 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

Against an inward-opening door, 

That pressure tightens evermore. 

They sigh a monstrous, foul-air sigh 
For the outside leagues of liberty, 

Where Art, sweet lark, translates the sky 
Into a heavenly melody.’’ 

The Christian spirit, and indeed Christ 
Himself, occupies a very large place in mod- 
ern literature. The place of Jesus in poetry, 
for example, is suggested in the mention 
of Dante’s ‘‘Vision,” Tennyson’s “Holy 
Grail,” Lowell’s “Vision of Sir Lannfal,” 
Browning’s “Christmas Eve,” “Easter 
Day,” and “Death in the Desert,” Whit- 
tier’s ‘ ‘ Our Master, ’ ’ and Lanier’s ‘ ‘ Christ. ’ ’ 
Not only is Christ the inspiration and the 
theme of literature, but He is Himself the 
Supreme Master of the literary art. We are 
told that Jesus never left a written line. 
Perhaps so! But He formulated ideas so 
melodious that, in spite of translation, they 
“still breathe the sound of an ethereal mu- 
sic. ’ ’ His words, as given us by His biogra- 
phers, are the loftiest products of genius that 
the literary art has ever produced. Charles 
Dickens, that great master of the pathetic 
222 


THE EELIGIOUS ELEMENT 

style, was asked, ‘‘What is the most touching 
story in literature?^’ Without hesitation he 
answered, “The story of the Prodigal Son.” 
The world has given no dissenting voice. 
Coleridge, so rich in knowledge that his “con- 
versation sparkled with jewels of thought,” 
when asked for the richest passage in litera- 
ture, replied, “The Beatitudes.” No one 
seems disposed to take exception. Edmund 
Kean, the famous actor and artist, said there 
was one passage so full of tears that he 
thought no man could render it: “Come unto 
Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, 
and I will give you rest. ’ ’ Doubtless we are 
quite agreed that thus far no one has ever 
measured the depths of its pathos and its 
power. Burke, the statesman and orator, 
said the most important political document 
on the rights of man was “the Sermon on the 
Mount.” With one accord all give assent. 
What literary artist has ever made an ap- 
peal to childhood’s heart like “Suffer the 
little children to come unto Me, and forbid 
them not, for of such is the Kingdom of 
heaven?” Or, who has cleared the sky of 
the soul’s immortal hope like Jesus in the 
223 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

words, ^‘Let not your lieart be troubled; ye 
believe in God, believe also in Me. In My 
Father’s house are many mansions?” 

One place where Christ’s literary suprem- 
acy is seen at its best is in His use of para- 
bles and pictures. The world- wide principles 
of the scientist and the abstract reasonings 
of the philosopher are “the raw materials 
of thought” hard for the common mind to 
grasp. “Hobbling along on the crutches of 
logic, reason arrives at the truth. Then the 
imagination seeks a form of expression.” 
The picture and the parable are the art 
products of the creative imagination. In re- 
spect to truth they may be even deeper than 
the formulated statement, but in any event 
they fasten themselves upon the memory. 
Arguments as to sin and its fatal conse- 
quences are soon forgotten; but Christ 
painted a picture that men can not forget: 
“If any man heareth these sayings of Mine 
and doeth them not, I will liken him unto 
a foolish man who built his house upon the 
sand.” Men may argue the questions of 
pardon and forgiveness; but who will hear? 

224 


THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT 


The first theological work published in Amer- 
ica bears on its title-page these words, 
Complete Body of Divinity, in two hundred 
and fifty lectures upon the Assemblies ’ 
Shorter Catechism.’’ ^‘Christ takes whole 
theological systems and, using the essence of 
them for His colors, paints a picture,” ‘‘The 
Prodigal Son. ’ ’ Here we have it : God, man ; 
how they got separated, and how they get 
together again. This is literary genius at 
its noblest and highest. Just as the chemist 
takes the “sweetness of an acre of crimson 
blossoms and puts them into a small vial 
of attar of roses,” so Christ gathers up all 
the vastness of truth and tosses it to us in 
a form that will live forever, a sweet-smelling 
savor and perfume for the soul. 

God help us to be wise in the literary 
lore of all the ages ! But God save us from 
the boasted conceit of imagined literary at- 
tainment that is steeped in ignorance of the 
world’s masterpiece of literature, the Book 
of books, and of the world’s supreme Mas- 
ter of the literary art, the Christ of the Bible ! 


15 


225 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 


The Gospel in Literature. — Greene. 

Great Books. — Farrar. 

The Higher Ministries of Recent English Poetry. — 
Gunsaulus. 

Men and Books. — Phelps. 

Great Books as Life-Teachers. — Hillis. 

The Influence of Christ in Modern Life. — Hillis. 
The Poet’s Poet and Other Essays. — Quayle. 

A Hero and Some Other Folk. — Quayle. 

Books and Life. — Quayle. 

The Pastor-Preacher. — Quayle. 

Side-Lights on Immortality. — Gilbert. 

The Religious Instinct of Man. — Bristol. 
Christianity in the Nineteenth Century. — Lorimer. 
The New Epoch for Faith. — Gordon. 

The Practice of Self-Culture. — Black. 

Library of the World’s Best Literature. (Thirty- 
one volumes.) — Warner. 

Modem Poets and Christian Teaching. (Set.) 
Tennyson. — Smyser. 

Browning. — ^Lockwood. 

Arnold. — Dixon. 

Lanier. — Snyder. 

Lowell. — Quayle. 

Mrs. Browning. — Crow. 

Gilder, Markham and Sill. — Downey. 

Whittier. 


226 


THE EELIGIOUS ELEMENT 


Channing’s Works. 

Works of the Poets. 

In a Nook with a Book. — Macdonald. 

The Bible in the World’s Education. — Warren. 
Short Introduction to the Literature of the Bible. 
— Moulton. 


1 


1 


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i 

\ 

i 

H 

V 

i 




' 



■! 



The Bible, God’s Depository of Truth 


“Thy word is truth.’’ John 17 : 17. 
“The word of the Lord endureth forever.” 
Peter 1 ; 25. 


THE BIBLE, GOD’S DEPOSITORY OF 
TRUTH 


The Bible is the monumental record of the 
monumental revelation of the mind and heart 
of God to humanity. It is the castle of truth 
set aloft upon the mount of revelation, whose 
light streams forth to the very ends of the 
earth. It is the revealed treasure in which 
is hidden all the riches of wisdom and knowl- 
edge. It is much fine gold tried in the fire 
of criticism and of experience; sweeter also 
than honey and the honeycomb. 

We are told of localities where gold is 
present everywhere. There is gold in the 
hidden rocks, gold in the stones that mend 
the roads, gold in the dust that blows in the 
streets, gold in the garden plot and in the 
farm. But ofttimes the quantity is so limited 
as to be scarcely worth one’s while, and the 
method of discovery too difficult. The seeker 
after religious truth finds that truth is every- 
where. If he turn to nature, history, art, 
music, or literature, it is never in vain, for 
231 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

the gold of truth is there. But for the hun- 
gry soul perishing for the Bread of Life, 
and for the yearning heart panting after the 
knowledge of God^s presence and favor, 
neither the quantity nor the form of truth 
as here contained suits man’s need. Not 
so with the Bible ; it is much fine gold. The 
height and depth of its riches in the things 
of the Spirit, and the ready access in the 
form of its presentation proclaim it, not in- 
cidentally hut primarily, a revelation for 
man. 

It is said, too, that where some of the 
richest veins of gold have been found men 
have come and gone for centuries, never 
dreaming of the wealth treasured beneath 
their feet. The truth of the Bible is like 
gold in the soil. Generations walk over it, 
while the heedless multitudes know not what 
riches escape them through neglect, or lie 
hidden under the feet of their too careless 
interpretation. Then some one really studies 
the Bible, discovers truth, and calls it new, 
but it is only new to the finder. 

The utterances of the Bible are not true 
merely because they are in the Bible, but 
232 


GOD’S DEPOSITOEY OF TRUTH 

they are in the Bible because they are true. 
The Bible is God’s Book, not merely because 
it is inspired, but because ^4t tells us the 
truth about God’s way with men.’^ We are 
not so much to receive the teachings of the 
Bible because they are inspired as we are 
to acknowledge the inspiration because of 
the teaching. It is the truth that proves the 
inspiration, and not the inspiration the 
truth. The basis of our appeal to the reason 
is the truth that the Bible contains. Given 
the Scriptures, some explanation becomes 
necessary. Divine inspiration is the only 
explanation that seems to satisfy. We need 
to heed the Scriptures because they are truth, 
vital to us ; and in as much as they are such, 
we need to honor them and recognize their 
divine authority as having God for their 
Author, truth for their substance, and salva- 
tion here and hereafter for their purpose. 

Is it possible for the average man, with- 
out the advantages of expert knowledge, to 
know that the Bible is God’s inspired truth? 
Such appears to be the case in the light of 
certain pertinent facts easily within the reach 
of all. 


233 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 


The foundation truths of the Bible are 
self-evident when man measures them over 
against the deepest needs of his own heart 
and life. A converted Chinaman reached the 
heart of a great philosophy when he said, 
‘ ‘ Whoever made me made that Book. That 
was a well-reasoned conclusion from the con- 
scious fact that the Bible and his inner na- 
ture answered to one another. 

Bishop Whipple once told of a scholarly 
gentleman who said that for years he had 
read every book on the market that assailed 
the Bible, and that he would have become 
an in£del but for three things : ‘ ‘ First, I am 
a man. I am going somewhere. These books 
shed not one solitary ray of light upon the 
darkness. Second, I had a mother. I saw 
her go down into the dark valley where I 
am going, and she leaned upon an Unseen 
Arm as calmly as a child goes to sleep on 
the breast of its mother. Third, I have three 
motherless daughters.’’ Let such a one take 
the Bible into his heart, and with him the 
truth of it will not depend upon the dictum, 
of logician, critic, theologian, nor philoso- 
pher. 


234 


GOD^S DEPOSITORY OF TRUTH 

It is said of Justin Martyr that in his 
early manhood he was athirst for truth and 
peace. In his quest for that which satisfies 
the craving of the inner life he goes to the 
representative philosophers of his day. The 
Stoic tells him he is foolish, and that there is 
but one thing for a man to do : set his face like 
a flint and vow that whatever comes or goes, 
he will not be moved. In this there is noth- 
ing for Justin Martyr, and he goes farther; 
this time to the Peripatetic philosopher. He 
demands a fee, and the moral sense of the 
great man is outraged. What will Justin 
Martyr do ? He still pursues his weary way, 
going, this time, to the representative of the 
Pythagorean philosophy, and he dismisses 
him because he does not know music and 
mathematics. Then he goes to the Platonist, 
who tells him to think, and think, and think, 
until his mind soars away to Deity. This 
looks a little better, and the agonizing seeker 
tries, but all in vain. He is ready to give 
up, and, on the verge of despair, he walks 
to the shore of a small lake, where the waters, 
so calm and serene, seem only to plague his 
soul. Here he meets an elderly man, a Chris- 
235 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

tian. They fall into conversation, and the 
old hero of the cross, quickly grasping the 
meaning of the young man’s distress, opens 
the Scriptures and preaches unto him J esus. 
How does Justin Martyr know that this, and 
not the other, is truth? It answers to the 
deepest needs of his own soul; and when, 
this is so, to deny its truth would be to call 
in question the trustworthiness of the very 
faculties by which we must be guided or be 
left entirely without anchorage. 

Tennyson was one day walking in his 
arbor, musing aloud over some verses of his 
‘‘In Memoriam.” He sees a caterpillar 
crawling up the leg of his desk, on which 
there lies an open Bible. He begins to medU 
tate, saying aloud to himself, “That worm 
does not know how sad I am. It can not 
understand. What if God does not under- 
stand? Does He know? Does He care?” 
Then Tennyson takes the Bible from his desk 
and, folding it to his breast, he says, “But 
God does understand; He tells me so.” 
God’s thought and love, communicated 
through the Bible, are a message that rings 
true to the yearning cry of the soul. Through 
236 


GOD’S DEPOSITOEY OF TEIJTH 

tlie Bible God speaks. We see the electrical 
instrument in one house delicately poised 
and precisely adjusted to the telephone in 
another house. It carries the words per- 
fectly. So the Bible conveys the message of 
God, and its adjustment to the delicate mech- 
anism of the soul indicates not only its truth, 
but that both belong to the same system of 
things, with one and the same Author. 

That the Bible is God’s inspired truth is 
further evident from the way it has increased 
in power, and has wrought itself into the 
best there is in our civilizations and attain- 
ments. The safety of life itself, which is 
fundamental to all civilization, depends upon 
the Bible. I have heard of a young infidel 
who, in company with a. wealthy uncle, was 
journeying toward the Pacific in search of 
gold. Beaching the end of the railway, they 
walked along lonesome paths until the ap- 
proach of night. They came at last to a 
little hut where they were met by a rough- 
looking man. Not daring to risk the journey 
further at so late an hour, they decided to 
stay over night. The house had but two little 
rooms, to one of which they were assigned. 
237 


THE QUEST OP TEUTH 

It was decided that the young man should 
sit up for the first half of the night, with 
pistol in hand, and at midnight they were 
to change off. Presently the young infidel 
came tumbling into bed. The surprised uncle 
said: it midnight already? It seems 

as though I have but just fallen asleep.’’ 
‘‘No,” said the nephew; “but I ’m going to 
bed.” The uncle was up in a minute. What 
had happened? The young man, looking 
through a crack in the partition, had seen 
their rough-looking host, in his bear-skin suit, 
take a Bible from the shelf and kneel with 
his family around the rickety old table. The 
man does not live, however much he may 
have to say about his unbelief, who would 
not under like circumstances have felt better 
and more safe when the old man’s Bible ap- 
peared. Would a pack of cards, a rum bottle, 
a copy of the “Age of Eeason,” or any secu- 
lar book, however good, have produced a like 
effect? There is but one answer, and that 
answer is not without significance. 

Not only is the Bible inwrought into the 
very foundations of our civilizations, but it 
has become a constituent part of the warp 
238 


GOD’S DEPOSITOEY OF TEUTH 


and woof of onr noblest attainments. Take 
literature as an example. How large is the 
debt of the literary world to the Sacred 
Book ! Even Goethe, the admired of all 
skeptics, had the walls of his home covered 
with religious maps and pictures. Milton’s 
‘‘Paradise Lost” is a part of the Bible in 
blank verse. Tasso ’s ‘ ‘ Jerusalem Delivered ’ ’ 
is borrowed almost wholesale from the Bible. 
Bunyan saw in a dream only a glimpse of 
what St. John had seen before in all the glory 
of Apocalyptic vision. Macaulay crowns his 
most majestic sentences with words of Scrip- 
ture. Through Addison’s “Spectator” 
“there glances in and out the stream that 
broke from beneath the throne of God, clear 
as crystal. ” Sir Walter Scott’s greatest cre- 
ations of character are Bible men and women. 
Carlyle would easily pass for a splendid dis- 
tortion of Ezekiel. The Bible is the great 
fountain of truth from which other books 
dip their life. 

“A glory gilds the sacred page, 

Majesty like the sun, 

It gives a light to every age ; 

It gives, but borrows none. 

239 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 


‘‘The Hand that gave it still supplies 
The gracious light and heat; 

His truths upon the nations rise; 

They rise, but never set. 

“Let everlasting thanks be Thine 
For such a bright display, 

As makes a world of darkness shined 
With beams of heavenly day.” 

It will help ns to realize how thoroughly 
inwrought into all our life and treasures the 
Bible has become, and how completely we 
are in the grip of its power, if we seek to 
answer the question, “WTiat would be neces- 
sary in order to destroy the Bible? If it 
be suggested that we have only to destroy 
every printed copy, that in itself would be 
a task of immense proportions. It would 
take us to the frozen arctic snows and to 
the burning sands of the equator, into the 
jungles of our least explored continent and 
to the most remote islands of distant seas; 
for wherever man is found, there some gos- 
pel herald has gone with the Bible. If all 
this were possible, the task would be scarcely 
begun. There are still some eight hundred 
manuscripts, scattered world-wide in libra- 
240 


GOD’S DEPOSITOEY OF TRUTH 

ries and museums, public and private. These 
too would have to be destroyed, and then we 
would need to go farther. It would be nec- 
essary to destroy practically every book that 
bears the imprint of brains. Lord Hailes, 
the antiquarian, said, have actually dis- 
covered the whole New Testament except 
eleven verses in the secular writings of the 
first three centuries of this era.” It is 
claimed that in the works of Tennyson there 
are four hundred and thirty-six, and in the 
writings of Euskin nine hundred and twenty- 
six quotations from or allusions to the Bible. 
Take from our Tennyson, Euskin, Browning, 
Shakespeare, and the rest, what has come 
directly or indirectly from Bible language, 
teaching, inspiration, and ideals, and how 
much would be left that would command the 
attention even of the irreligious! We would 
have also to reckon with the paintings and 
mosaics of the world. Go anywhere that you 
will, from the greatest galleries of all na- 
tions, where the originals are to be found, 
to the poorest home of the humblest cottager, 
on whose walls there hangs the little sketch 
or reproduction, and everywhere art tells 
241 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

the gospel story. From the canvas of living 
but silent speech alone the Bible would con- 
tinue forever to hold sway in the veneration 
and love of the race. But if all this were 
done, even yet the Bible would not be de- 
stroyed, so great is its power. There is still 
left music, which not only contains Bible 
truth, but, as by winged flight, wafts it to 
the soul with charm and delight. Is it a mere 
chance that the Christian nations are the 
singing nations of the world! The harmonies 
of God^s universe, fundamental to music, are 
one with the truths of God, whose inspired 
expression we have in the Bible. When the 
Bible acquaints men with God and His Christ, 
it touches the deepest emotions of the soul, 
needful to music and song. A dull world 
without music, Tis true; but even then we 
must not stop unless our destructive pur- 
pose is to meet with utter failure. Every 
church must be destroyed, for the very pres- 
ence of the church reminds men of God and 
the teaching from the Holy Book. Our edu- 
cational systems must meet with like fate, 
for they are largely the product of the Chris- 
tian religion. Does it merely happen by 
242 


GOD’S DEPOSITOEY OF TEUTH 

some inexplicable chance that the educational 
systems of Christian nations are so vastly 
superior to those of other nations, or is the 
possibility of this superiority potentially in- 
herent in the truth of the Bible? All our 
eleemosynary and charitable institutions 
would of course be included, for they are in 
their very nature distinctly Christian. By 
what turn of fate or chance does it happen 
that it is only in Bible lands that sweet 
charity seeks out the aged, the infirm, the 
sick, the delinquent, and even the criminal? 
But if all these were destroyed, the Bible 
would still live. Go to any little hillside in 
all Christendom where there nestles the quiet 
city of the dead, and you will find the Bible. 
Here is the Shepherd folding the lamb to 
His bosom; there is the dove of peace, or 
an open book on whose marble pages are the 
words ‘‘Holy Bible;” yonder in every direc- 
tion are stones bearing verses of Scripture, 
or some lines expressive of Biblical senti- 
ment. There is enough Bible truth in the 
cemeteries of the dead to save the world. 
Even yet the work must go on until not one 
living Christian remains. Though we may 
243 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

have drifted far from the good old days 
when people committed to memory large por- 
tions of Scripture, to-day the Bible is in the 
minds and hearts of God^s people, and more 
largely in their lives than ever before. When 
Pat^s Protestant Bible was being burned by 
his spiritual overseer, he only smiled, saying: 
‘‘Ye think ye Ve burned me Bible? It’s 
written on the fleshly tables of me heart.” 
One other step remains : the slaying of all 
unbelievers, atheists, and infidels who know 
anything about the Bible. For if the world 
were without a Bible, the hungry hearts of 
some of these outcasts from the faith would 
drive them to write one from such Scriptures 
as memory held in store from that earlier 
study prompted by destructive purpose. 

And yet it was of this same Bible, so 
matchless in power and so marvelously in- 
terwoven with every good thing, that Vol- 
taire dared to speak with such boldness, de- 
claring that in a hundred years there would 
not be a copy of the Bible on earth. But 
Voltaire did not know that to-day the very 
press on which that blasphemous prophecy 
was printed would be owned by the Geneva 
244 


GOD’S DEPOSITOEY OF TEUTH 

Bible Society and be used for the printing 
of Bibles. Nor did be know that during tbe 
last year there would be put into circulation 
nearly twelve million copies of the Bible as 
a whole, or of some portion of it, and all of 
this despite the immense circulation of for- 
mer years. Imagine his surprise, could he 
have been told that to-day you could take the 
annual circulation of the one hundred most 
popular books, and their total would be just 
about equal to the annual circulation of the 
Bible alone. How he would have looked with 
astonishment at the fact that the twentieth 
century was greeted by over eighty Bible 
societies, publishing the Bible at least in part 
in five hundred and seventeen languages and 
dialects ! 

‘‘Last eve I stood before a blacksmith’s door 
And heard the anvil ring its vesper chimes; 

Then, looking in, I saw upon the floor 
Old hammers worn with beating years of time. 

“ ‘How many anvils have you had,’ said I, 

‘ To wear and batter all these hammers so ? ’ 
‘Just one,’ he answered, then, with twinkling 
eye, 

‘ The anvil wears the hammers out, you know. ’ 
245 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 


“And so the Bible, anvil of God’s Word, 

For ages skeptic blows have beat upon; 

And though the noise of Paine, Voltaire was 
heard. 

The anvil is unworn — the hammers gone. 

“Apprentice blows of ignorance, forsooth. 

Many awe with sound, and blinding sparks 
death- whirled ; 

The Master holds and turns the iron. His truth, 
And shapes it as He wills, to bless the world. ’ ’ 
— L. B. Cake. 

Modem Biblical criticism has caused a 
widespread anxiety. But the Bible that has 
shown its superior tmth in the withstanding 
of all former attacks has here new opportu- 
nity to let the luster of its true character 
shine forth. If it is much fine gold, no fire 
of honest criticism can do it harm. Destruc- 
tive criticism is self-destmctive, and it is a 
notable fact that it is already beginning to 
pass out of vogue. The atmosphere of the 
world of scholarship is constantly becoming 
less cordial to the hostile type of criticism 
that seeks to destroy, and is demanding more 
and more that criticism, to be reputable, must 
be constructive and sympathetic. One of the 
246 


GOD’S DEPOSITOEY OP TRUTH 


results of the higher criticism is certain to 
be added confidence in the Bible as the eter- 
nal truth of God. Dr. George A. Gordon 
sums up the case in these significant words : 
‘^The Bible has had a vital cosmopolitan 
trial of two thousand years ; it comes attested 
by time as the spiritual treasure of mankind. 
It comes laden with the gratitude of the 
brave, covered with the homage of the seer, 
and perfumed with the love of the suffering 
men and women whom it has lifted into peace. 
It has survived all fashions and has in its 
favor the verdict of history. Time has 
proved it to be the Child of the Eternal, the 
Word of God to our world for all the ages.” 

The truth of the Bible as the inspired 
word of God is also shown in the fact that 
the Bible is peculiar among books for the 
living energy that has accompanied its spread 
and acceptance. This appears first in per- 
sonal life. The miracle of ‘‘Twice Bom 
Men” is ever before our eyes. As long as 
the Bible gives to men a transforming vision 
and makes them new creatures in Christ 
Jesus, so long it will not be wanting in con- 
vincing testimonial. It is a living Book, 
247 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

having a living Christ for its expression and 
a living Chnroh as its product. ‘^The Bible 
is not dependent on the dead letters of the 
monuments for its credibility, nor does the 
earthly life of our Lord require the attesta- 
tion of some rock-hewn gospel. From age to 
age, from generation to generation, the gos- 
pel is written in the hearts and lives of men, 
and Christ walks in His true Church to-day 
as really as among the golden candlesticks 
in the apocalyptic vision. It is not a dead 
gospel, nor an empty manger or sepulcher, 
which claims our interest. It is a living gos- 
pel, which is confirmed in the hearts of men 
rather than by any testimony of the monu- 
ments or ancient manuscripts. We bow be- 
fore Him in loving adoration who liveth and 
was dead, and is alive for evermore.’’ The 
authority of the Bible does not rest, in the 
last analysis, upon arbitrary claims, nor 
upon what the critics are able to prove or to 
disprove, but upon its power to quicken and 
sustain the life of the Spirit. ‘‘The response 
of the Spirit in the reader is the witness to 
the presence of the Spirit in the writers and 
their words.” 


248 


GOD’S DEPOSITORY OF TRUTH 


To the individual the Bible is light and 
salvation. In the South Kensington Museum, 
in London, is a great painting representing 
the death of Oliver Cromwell. Everywhere 
about the room and on the faces of those 
present are dark shadows. But there is 
bright light in the room. Its center is a Bible 
on CromwelPs breast, over which the hero’s 
hands are folded, and from which the light 
streams up into his face. From that Book 
the great Puritan prince, one of the mightiest 
men of the Anglo-Saxon race, drew his light 
and inspiration for life and for death. The 
Bible has touched and transformed the life 
of humanity with a living energy and power 
that is divine. It is light and life because it 
holds up before us the face of Jesus Christ. 

‘‘Word of the everlasting God, 

Will of His glorious Son; 

Without thee how could earth be trod, 

Or heaven itself be won? 

“Lord, grant us all aright to learn 
The wisdom it imparts ; 

And to its heavenly teaching turn. 

With simple, childlike hearts.” 

249 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

Nor is tlie Bible less a quickening power 
in collective than in individual life. Its ab- 
sence is cbaos and disorder. A young fellow 
on board a ship was displeased to find a large 
company of ministers as passengers. In the 
presence of several of them he told the cap- 
tain in -an insulting manner that he was sorry 
he had engaged passage on that boat because 
there were so many ministers. The captain, 
who was a rough fellow, replied, ‘Hf you ’ll 
show me a town in England where there are 
five thousand people and not one parson, I ’ll 
show you a place a mile nearer hell than ever 
you ’ve been.” The minister’s influence is 
the power of the truth, as he wields the sword 
of the Spirit, which is the word of Grod. The 
Bible makes for the strength, vigor, and 
purity of social, industrial, and national life. 
Some years ago there was a British expedi- 
tion to Tahiti, in quest of breadfruit trees. 
On the journey a mutiny occurred. The mu- 
tineers took possession of the ship, and finally 
made a settlement on Pitcairn Island. There 
followed two years of quarreling, drunken 
carousal, and death. Then John Adams 
alone by himself becomes converted. He 
250 


GOD’S DEPOSITORY OF TRUTH 


finds a Bible among the ship ’s stores and be- 
gins to teach the people. Very soon there are 
evidences of a new civilization, and presently 
a prosperous Christian island. 

What made the glory and strength of the 
sternness and chivalry of Puritanism on both 
sides of the Atlantic? It was the fact that 
every school boy had so pored over the Bible 
that he became saturated with its phrases 
and its spirit. Bible language became the 
speech of the people, and Bible ideals gave 
the rigor of unyielding conviction to their 
standards. 

The greatest queen in modem history 
understood the power of the Bible in the life 
of a nation. A foreign prince said to Vic- 
toria, ‘‘What is the secret of England’s great- 
ness?” The queenly woman arose, and tak- 
ing a Bible from the drawing-room table be- 
fore her, she reached it out to the young 
prince, saying, “This is the secret of Eng- 
land’s greatness.’ ’ 

The sacred books of all religions must 
abide the test of their fruitage in the lives of 
men and nations. The answer to the Shastas 
is India, India with her starving millions, 
251 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

child widowhood, sacrifice of infants at the 
Ganges, moral sterility, and manifest impo- 
tence. The answer to Confucianism is China, 
China just now beginning to awake from the 
sleep of the centuries through her recent 
touch with Western civilization and the 
Christian religion. The answer to the Koran 
is Turkey, Turkey ‘‘the sick man of Eu- 
rope, ’ ’ Turkey with her massacres, treachery, 
and shame. The answer to Catholicism is 
Italy, Spain, France, and the Philippines as 
the United States found them. The answer to 
the open Bible is Protestant Europe and 
America. “By their fruits ye shall know 
them.’’ There is something seriously de- 
fective about any religion which can hold 
sway for centuries over the lives and govern- 
ment of a people, and yet leave that people 
with an appalling absence of moral and eth- 
ical standards, of educational and philan- 
thropic institutions, of individual and na- 
tional ideals, of honesty and chastity, of chiv- 
alry and of conscience. 

The answer of the Bible to the deepest 
needs of mankind, its unparalleled power 
and vital relation to all progress and achieve- 
252 


GOD’S DEPOSITORY OF TRUTH 

ment, and the results of its acceptance by the 
one or the many, are pertinent and significant 
facts that place the Bible in a class by itself. 
Nor has either the mind or the heart of the 
race been satisfied thus far with any expla- 
nation that makes the Bible other than the in- 
spired word of the living and eternal God. 

In the light of these facts we are not sur- 
prised that the Bible is the most interesting 
book in the world. It has a cosmopolitan at- 
tractiveness that makes it the most fitting and 
effective agency for the carrying of the truth 
to all nations. It admits of endless transla- 
tion without the loss of its beauty or its 
power. It is an ancient book, and yet the 
most advanced of modem thought. It is an 
Oriental book, and yet has its widest circu- 
lation in the most progressive Western na- 
tions. It is both one book and a library of 
sixty-six books. It contains almost infinite 
diversity of treatment, and yet a marvelous 
unity of theme and purpose that centers in 
the person of Christ. It abounds in all kinds 
of material and of literature — law, orations, 
stories, adventure, romance, allegories, par- 
ables, letters, biographies, arguments, songs, 
253 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

clironicles, sermons, prophecy, proverbs, po- 
etry, drama. 

The' great interest in the Bible lies not in 
its form, but in its unparalleled table of con- 
tents. Turn back to the earlier pages, and we 
find Genesis giving us the finest attempt in 
the world at a history of beginnings. Bead 
the Greek and the Indian cosmogonies, or any 
statement of naturalism or materialistic evo- 
lution, and how empty and insufficient they 
sound when placed alongside of the sublime 
utterance, ^‘In the beginning God created the 
heaven and the earth.’’ Bead Plato’s effort 
to explain the ancestry of souls, or any of the 
profoundest explanations of the ages, and 
how like nothing they seem when measured 
by the majesty and might of that Scripture 
which tells us that ‘‘God breathed into him 
life, and man became a living soul.” Besides 
giving us Abraham, one of the greatest of 
personalities. Genesis gives us the beginnings 
of the universe, of man, of the chosen family, 
of sin, of death, of salvation in the promise 
that “the seed of the woman should bruise 
the serpent’s head.” It gives us the begin- 
nings of peoples as nations, and the begin- 
nings of the Jew, the miracle among nation- 
254 


GOD^S DEPOSITOEY OF TRUTH 


alities; the Jew, ‘^oldest of living peoples; 
with authentic history before battle trum- 
peted at the gate of Troy, whose ten tribes 
passed into perpetual banishment when 
Greece and Rome were mythic names and 
waging mythic wars ; with history and genius, 
unprecedented longevity, and unparalleled 
catastrophe, the solitary people to whose an- 
nals miracles indubitably belong.’’ 

The Pentateuch gives us Moses, the wise 
statesman and courageous leader, the giver 
of law and inspiration to his time and to all 
times. 

Joshua, in its story of the conquest of 
Canaan by the Israelites, is a battle program, 
more fascinating than Caesar’s Commen- 
taries. 

The Book of Ruth is a pastoral, beauti- 
ful beyond compare, beside which ‘^The Vi- 
car of Wakefield” and ‘^Loma Boone” are 
most inferior. 

The Book of Job is a dramatic poem that 
ranks with the best in any language. It goes 
to the very seat of life’s problem, as its hero. 
Job, is put to the severest tests of faith. It 
presents the tragedies of a good man’s life, 
255 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 


that end with the shadows of the night slip- 
ping away from the hills at dawn. It is re- 
ported of Carlyle that on one occasion, at the 
house of a friend, he was reading at family 
prayers from the Book of Job. He became so 
intensely interested that he kept on reading 
until he had finished the entire Book, and 
then he looked up to find the family all gone, 
they having slipped out one at a time. 

The story of David is more thrilling with 
interest than the Odyssey. The Psalms are 
praise-songs that have no equal. 

Who has ever reached the sublimities of 
Isaiah, especially in the marvelous poetic 
prophecies of the Christ and His kingdom? 
We speak of ‘Hhe lordly Milton,’’ but even 
Milton is not lordly by the standard of Isaiah. 
Thanks to Matthew Arnold, who set the lit- 
erary world journeying through Isaiah. 

Jeremiah, who made it his business to 
give a standard of righteousness for the na- 
tions, is more tender than Mrs. Browning’s 
‘‘The Cry of the Children,” and more fuU 
of heartaches than Tennyson’s “In Memo- 
riam.” Of all elegies set to words by sor- 
row, there is none like Lamentations. 

256 


GOD’S DEPOSITORY OF TRUTH 


Ezekiel is a series of poetic visions, un- 
rivaled in allegorical splendor. We think of 
Dante as imaginative, but Ezekiel is more 
imaginative than Dante. 

The heroes of earth are legion, hut where 
is the hero who can stand by the side of 
Daniel f 

And here are those little Books, so 
often passed over all too lightly, the Minor 
Prophets. What lessons they teach ! Hosea, 
God’s love for His wayward people;” Joel, 
spiritual worship of God;” Amos, ‘threat- 
ened judgment for sin;” Obadiah, “the folly 
of resisting God;” Jonah, “the wideness of 
God’s mercy;” Micah, “the triumph of God’s 
mercy;” Nahum, “consolation in the Lord;” 
Habakkuk, “confidence in God in darkest 
trials ; ’ ’ Zephaniah, ‘ ‘ the goodness and sever- 
ity of the Lord;” Haggai, “temple building 
in devotion and faith ; ’ ’ Zechariah, ‘ ‘ restora- 
tion by divine power and love;” Malachi, 
“God’s thought of His own in surrounding 
evil. ’ ’ 

Search the biographical literature of the 
centuries, but Boswell’s “Johnson” and 
others of the best, are no parallel to the Four 
257 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

Gospel BiograpMes. To Matthew, Christ is 
the Messiah King, to Mark the Divine 
Worker, to Lnke the Son of Man, to John 
the Divine Son of God. 

The Gospel of John is a solitaire among 
all the hooks of earth. The first fourteen 
verses of the first chapter have been called 
the sublimest strain of equal length in any; 
literature. 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word 
was with God, and the Word was God. 

The same was in the beginning with God. 

All things were made by Him; and without 
Him was not anything made that was made. 

In Him was life ; and the life was the hght of 
men. 

And the light shineth in darkness; and the 
darkness comprehended it not. 

There was a man sent from God, whose name 
was John. 

The same came for a witness, to bear witness of 
the Light, that all men through him might believe. 

He was not that Light, but was sent to bear wit- 
ness of that Light. 

That was the true Light, which lighteth every 
man that cometh into the world. 

He was in the world, and the world was made 
by Him, and the world knew Him not. 

258 


GOD’S DEPOSITORY OF TRUTH 


He came unto His own, and His own received 
Him not. 

But as many as received Him, to them gave He 
power to become the sons of God, even to them 
that believe on His name : 

Which were bom, not of blood, nor of the will 
of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt 
among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as 
of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace 
and tmth. 

If we turn to the Acts of the Apostles, we 
have a miraculous extension of the Church, 
in a religious propaganda that contemplates 
within the scope of its purpose and activities 
the conquest of the world. No romance of 
modem missions is more full of happy vic- 
tory and the power of God. 

No impatient lover of the new, anxious 
to break with the old system of things, was 
ever more sanely revolutionary than Paul, 
in his espousal of justification by faith, in 
the Letter to the Romans. 

If we desire principles of Christian living, 
those in first Corinthians are surpassing fair, 
while the Sermon on the Mount is the stand- 


259 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

ard that ultimately will be graiveu in the 
conscience of the world. 

For the relations between the Law and the 
Gospel, consult Galatians; for the unity of 
the Church, Ephesians; for the supremacy 
of Christ and His heavenly intercession, the 
Hebrews; for a treatise on Christian prac- 
tice, the Book of J ames ; for the brotherhood 
of man, the Epistle to Philemon. Philemon 
is a more touching tribute to friendship than 
Cicero ’s ^ ‘ Be Amicitia. ’ ’ 

And what shall we say of the Book of 
Revelation, in which the great truths of the 
Gospel are presented through the imagina- 
tion? It is ‘Hhe greatest poem of the ages, 
the Epic of Redemption.’’ In it the ‘‘drama 
of human destiny moves across the stage of 
time, with all forces, human and Divine, in 
full activity.” It is splendid enough to put 
all the sky in conflagration. 

Is our interest in men? Here is Paul. 
He is the greatest character bom of the Jew- 
ish race, save only the Christ. Do you doubt 
it? Then read again his Corinthian chapters 
on Love and the Resurrection. 

All of these considerations are good, but 
260 


GOD’S DEPOSITORY OF TRUTH 


the Bible is the most interesting book in the 
world because its chief content is Christ. It 
brings Him within the horizon of the soul, 
and gives the vision splendid. ‘^His words 
have swept the clouds from out the sky, His 
doctrines have changed the history of the 
world. His doings have taught the centuries 
to love each other, and He, the Lord of Life, 
walked calmly down into the grave to kill the 
king of death, and ‘having captivity captive 
and given gifts unto men,’ He as calmly 
walked up again through the springtime sky, 
and sat down far ‘ above all principality and 
power,’ and holds a name which is above 
every name. ’ ’ 

I plead for the reading and the study of 
the Bible. Approach it with the spirit of 
prayer and with the understanding. Carlyle 
tells of Mahometan mosques where thirty or 
more relays of priests take up the reading 
until the whole Bible is read each day, and of 
Mahometan doctors who have read it seventy 
thousand times. All of this appears to be 
more or less of a performance, with little re- 
sult in the life; even this is better than blank 
ignorance and neglect. 

261 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

In a Christian home not long ago, the 
mother asked her son where his Bible was. 
He replied, don’t know; I guess it ’s in 
my trunk up in the store-room.” Turning 
to the daughter she said, ‘ ‘ And where is your 
Bible!” The reply was: ‘‘I ’m not sure; I 
think it is upstairs in one of my bureau draw- 
ers.” It is not good practice to lose one’s 
Bible, especially if we leave it lost until we 
forget that it is lost. 

It is said of Chief- Justice Chase, that 
after becoming Governor of Ohio he had oc- 
casion to issue a Thanksgiving Proclamation. 
He composed it entirely from passages from 
the Bible, and, thinking that every one would 
know the source, did not use quotation marks. 
Presently a Democratic editor criticised it 
most severely, calling it a downright pla- 
giarism. He would swear under oath that he 
had seen it somewhere before, but couldn’t 
be just sure where. A Republican editor 
thought it necessary to come to the rescue, 
and made answer by declaring that he ab- 
solutely knew that not one single line of it 
had ever appeared in print before, for he was 
very sure that he had never seen it. 

262 


GOD^S DEPOSITORY OF TRUTH 


The Bible is no primer. It is God ^s great- 
est revelation to men. It may be true that 
the wayfaring man, though a fool, can run 
and read ; but I submit it to you, would it not 
be better, first, if he were not a fool, and sec- 
ond, if he did not try to read on the run? 
^ ‘ Thou shalt meditate therein day and night, 
that thou mayest observe to do all that is 
written therein: for then thou shalt make 
thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have 
good success.’’ Read the Bible for life, for 
liberty, for culture, for inspiration, for ideals, 
for wisdom, for salvation, for contact with 
Him who is life, help, and healing. 

The great men of the ages have believed 
in the Bible, and conscious of its power, have 
encouraged devotion in its study. 

Goethe confessed: ‘Ht is a belief in the 
Bible which has served me as the guide of my 
moral and literary life. No criticism will be 
able to perplex the confidence which we have 
entertained of a writing whose contents have 
stirred up and given life to our vital energy 
by its own. The farther the ages advance in 
civilization the more will the Bible be used.” 

Professor Huxley wrote : ‘ H have always 
263 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

been strongly in favor of secular education 
without theology, but I must confess that I 
have been no less seriously perplexed to 
know by what practical measures the reli- 
gions feeling, which is the essential basis of 
moral conduct, is to be kept up in the present 
utterly chaotic state of opinion on these ma,tr 
ters without the use of the Bible. ’ ’ 

Sir Walter Scott, on his deathbed, de- 
clared, There is only one Book.’^ 

Sir William Jones said: ‘^The Bible con- 
tains more true sense, more beauty, more 
pure morality, more important history, finer 
strains of poetry and eloquence than can be 
collected from any other set of books in any 
age or language.’’ 

Dr. Joseph Parker, the great English 
preacher and author, made these suggestive 
comments: ‘Ht is the wonder of the Bible 
that you never get through it. You get 
through all other books, but you never get 
through the Bible. I have preached twenty- 
five volumes of sermons upon this Book, and. 
now that I have written the very last word, 
what is my feeling? — I ought to have some 
feeling about it. Why this ; that I have not 
264 


GOD^S DEPOSITORY OF TRUTH 

begnn it yet. No other book could offer such 
infinite variety of material as is offered by 
the Bible.’’ 

Dr. Nott contended that ^ ^ Men can not be 
well educated without the Bible. It ought, 
therefore, to hold the chief place in every in- 
stitution of learning throughout Christen- 
dom.” 

Dr. Holland made this earnest plea: ‘‘Let 
us stick to our Bible. It is our all— the one 
regenerative, redemptive agency in the world 
■ — the only word that even sounds as if it 
came from the other side of the wave. If we 
lose it, we are lost.” 

John Quincy Adams read the Bible regu- 
larly. “For years I have read my Bible 
through once a year. I read it an hour every 
morning, as the very best way to begin the 
day. In whatever light we regard it — of 
morality, revelation, or history— it is a valu- 
able mine of knowledge and virtue.” 

Thomas Jefferson declared, “I have said 
and always will say that the studious perusal 
of the sacred volume will make better citi- 
zens, better fathers, and better husbands.” 

Benjamin Franklin regarded the Bible as 

265 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

an important sonrce of safety to the Republic. 

Bible and a newspaper in every home, 
and a good school in every district, all studied 
and appreciated as they merit, are the princi- 
pal supports of virtue, morality, and civil 
liberty. ’ ’ 

Daniel Webster studied the Bible and 
recognized his indebtedness to it. ‘ ‘ From the 
time I learned to lisp verses of Scripture at 
my father’s knee they have been my daily 
study. If there is anything in my style or 
thought to be commended, the credit is due 
to my parents giving me an early love for 
the Bible.” 

One of the last things that Grover Cleve- 
land wrote was an introduction to a Life of 
Christ, which he accompanied by a personal 
letter to the author, in which he said : ‘ H very 
much hope that in sending out this book you 
will do something to invite more attention 
among the masses of our people to the study 
of the New Testament and Bible as a whole. 
It seems to me that in these days there is an 
unhappy falling off in our appreciation of the 
importance of this study. I don’t believe, 
as a people, that we can afford to allow our 
266 


GOD^S DEPOSITOEY OF TEUTH 


interest in and veneration for the Bible to 
abate. I look npon it as the source from 
which those who study it in spirit and in 
truth will derive strength of character, a re- 
alization of the duty of citizenship, and a true 
apprehension of the power and wisdom and 
mercy of God.’’ 

Theodore Eoosevelt says: '‘The immense 
moral influence of the Bible, though, of 
course, the most important, is not the only 
power it has for good. In addition there is 
the increasing influence it exerts on the side 
of good taste, of good literature, of proper 
sense of proportion, of simple and straight- 
forward writing and thinking.” 

General Grant said: “To the influence of 
this Bible we are indebted for all the prog- 
ress we have ever made, and to it we must 
look as our sure guide in the future.” 

Abraham Lincoln, that tallest white angel 
of a thousand years, was much devoted to the 
Bible. After receiving the oath of office from 
Chief-Justice Chase, Lincoln stoops and 
fondly kisses the Bible lying open before him. 
At the close of a sermon at Heron Lake, 
Minn., during which this incident was told, 
267 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

an old soldier, Mr. Clark Wood, stepped for- 
ward and with evident emotion said to me : 
‘‘I was there, and saw Lincoln lift the Bible 
to his lips and kiss it. I shall never forget 
it.’^ On another occasion Lincoln had re- 
ceived a beantifnl copy of the Bible from the 
colored people of Baltimore. In responding 
to the presentation speech, he said: ‘Hn re- 
gard to the Great Book I have only to say, 
that it is the best gift that God has given to 
man. All the good from the Savior of the 
world is communicated through this Book.” 
About one year before Lincoln’s death, when 
the crushing load of responsibility and of 
care was weighing so heavily upon him, and 
making such demands upon his resources and 
his time, he said to his intimate friend, 
Joshua Speed: am profitably engaged in 

reading the Bible. Take all of this Book 
upon reason that you can, and the balance on 
faith, and you will live and die a better man. ’ ’ 
The Bible that has been a factor in the 
greatness of so many men, ought to chal- 
lenge the attention of the manhood, and par- 
ticularly of the youth of our day. 

268 


GOD’S DEPOSITOEY OF TEUTH 


‘‘How shall the young secure their hearts, 

And guard their lives from sin ? 

Thy Word the choicest rule imparts, 

To keep the conscience clean. 

“When once it enters to the mind. 

It spreads such light abroad, 

The meanest souls instruction find. 

And raise their thoughts to God. 

“ ’T is like the sun, a heavenly light. 

That guides us all the day ; 

And through the dangers of the night 
A lamp to lead our way. 

“Thy Word is everlasting truth; 

How pure is every page ! 

That Holy Book shall guide our youth. 

And well support our age.” 

In the intricate problems of to-day, un- 
der the stress and pressure of our modern 
life, we need to take time for communion 
with God through the Holy Book. I plead 
for the reverent and thorough study of the 
Word. It is our hope and our salvation. 
“Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think 
269 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

ye have eternal life ; and they are they which 
testify of Me.’’ 

Through the reading, study, and practice 
of the Word of God, quickly there shall come 
the answer to our prayer, ‘‘Thy kingdom 
come; Thy will be done in earth as it is in 
heaven. ” “ Strong men shall be led to crown 
our Christ, weary women fall at His feet, 
and little children fly to His arms. ’ ’ By the 
sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God, 
“social wrongs shall be righted, monstrous 
evils slain, and civic unrighteousness cease; 
domestic infelicities shall melt away, hearts 
be mended by the healing touch of love, and 
home become sweet, the nation’s citadel of 
power, the Church’s strong right arm.” 
Through the Bible, with its message of light 
and peace, “ignorance shall fall back before 
the conquering march of truth, superstitions 
be laid to rest in the cemeteries of the for- 
gotten dead, and humanity, no longer de- 
stroyed for lack of knowledge, be guided in 
the way of life eternal by the Spirit of all 
truth seated upon the throne of knowledge ; 
the plague of war shall hide itself in the 
swamps of oblivion before the coming of the 
270 


GOD’S DEPOSITORY OF TRUTH 


Prince of Peace, the Kingdom of God no 
more, as sometimes in days of yore, ride for- 
ward upon a powder cart, 

‘The war-dnam shall throb no longer, and the 
battle flags be furled 

In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of 
the World.’ ” 

Through the inspired Bible, God’s eternal 
truth, it shall come to pass that “no people 
shall be called foreign, no interests be re- 
garded alien nor conflicting, no national nor 
race barriers be able to stay the coming of 
Him, who having made of one blood all the 
nations of the earth, is enlarging the hearts 
of men to the concept of universal brother- 
hood; a heathen world and mission-fields 
shall be no more; desolate places, laid waste 
by the ravages of sin, shall blossom as the 
rose, and men separated oceans wide be 
joined in heart by love and loyalty to a com- 
mon Savior. ’ ’ By means of Bible truth in the 
hearts and lives of men, “there shall be a 
new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwell- 
eth righteousness.” “And they shall not 
teach every man his neighbor, and every man 
271 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 


his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for all 
shall know Him from the least to the great- 
est;’’ and ‘‘At the name of Jesus, every knee 
shall bow, of things in heaven and things in 
earth and things under the earth, and every 
tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is 
Lord, to the glory of God the Father. ’ ’ 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Bible in the World’s Education. — Warren. 
The Bible and the Nineteenth Century. — Town- 
send. 

Christianity in the Nineteenth Century. — Lorimer. 
The Printed English Bible. — Lovett. 

Our Bible and How We Got It. — Talbot. 

How We Got Our Bible. — Smith. 

General View of the History of the English Bible. 

— Westcott. 

Old Bibles. — Door. 

English Versions of the Bible. — Mombert. 

Hebrew Poetry. — Lowth. 

The Story of the Psalms. — Yan Dyke. 

The Poetry of the Psalms. — Van Dyke. 

The Song of Our Syrian Guest. — Knight. 

The Divine Origin of the Bible. — Torrey. 

Hours With the Bible. — Geikie. 

A Manual of Bible History. — Blaikie. 

Dictionary of the Bible. — Hastings. 

272 


GOD’S DEPOSITORY OF TRUTH 


The Literature of the Old Testament. — Kautzsch. 
The Stars and the Book. — Cohern. 

Is the Lord Among Us ? — Huntington. 

The Young Man With A Program. — Echman. 
The Royalty of Jesus. — Luccock. 

Advance in the Antilles. — Grose. 

The Influences of Christ in Modern Life. — Hillis. 
Books and Life. — Quayle. 

A Hero and Some Other Folk. — Quayle. 

The Twelve Minor Prophets. — Smith. 

Religious Views of Abraham Lincoln. — Pennell. 
Origin and Inspiration of the Bible. — Gaussen. 

A Plain Man’s Working View of Biblical Inspira- 
ation. — Lyman. 

The Old Documents and the New Bible. — Smyth. 
The Christ of To-day. — Gordon. 

The Doctrine of the Prophets. — Kirkpatrick. 
Parliament of Religions. — Neely. 

Between the Testaments. — Gregg. 

Bible Studies for Teacher Training. — Boads. 
Outlines of Social Theology. — Hyde. 

The Making of a Teacher. — Brumbaugh. 

The Holy Spirit in Life and Service. 
Representative Men of the Bible. — Matheson. 

The Life-Giving Spirit. — Cook. 


18 


273 


# 






Christ Jesus, The Truth Incarnate 


‘‘Jesus saith unto him, I am . . . the Truth/’ 

John 14 : 6. 

“Christ, . . . the wisdom of God.” 

1 Corinthians 1 : 24. 


CHRIST JESUS, THE TRUTH INCAR- 
NATE 


The essence of tmth is life, supreme and 
perfect. Reality lies in Personality. The 
nniverse, and all the life we see about us, 
centers in and proceeds from an Infinite 
Person. The Infinite Person and His truth 
can not be known to us in any considerable 
degree, except as they are mediated through 
persons. The Truth, in its completeness, 
necessitates the mediation of Perfect Person- 
ality. 

Throughout all the ages God’s plan for 
the revelation of Himself and the teaching 
of the race has been the personal method. 
When God wanted to give to the world the 
truths of statesmanship. He put them into 
the soul of an Alfred the Great, a Cromwell, 
a Gladstone, or an Abraham Lincoln. When 
He desired to reveal the truths of electricity. 
He not only zigzagged them on the sky with 
the flash of the lightnings, but He gave them 
277 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

to ns in life, in snch persons as Franklin, 
Morse, Field, Edison, and Marconi. When 
God wished ns to know the tmths of science. 
He did not give ns abstract statements, bnt 
scientific men, Copemicns, Galileo, Newton, 
Harvey, and the rest. Scientific tmth is the 
transcript of life, and we receive it when it 
is so mediated to ns throngh life that we are 
able to connt the cost in toil, pain, and blood. 
The history of science is not primarily the 
record of discovery, bnt of long-snffering 
and victorions manhood, living its tmth into 
acceptance throngh the stmggles of the hn- 
man sonl. When God wonld give to hnman- 
ity the tmths of poetry. He did not do it by 
writing them on the sky with an angel’s 
finger, bnt He incarnated them in the great 
sonls of Shakespeare, Tennyson, Browning, 
and all those who 

‘‘Walk the hills where the muses haunt, 
Where the gods and men hold fellowship.^’ 

In God’s revelation in the Bible, the tmths 
each writer presents he floats to ns on the 
tides of his own life. To know these tmths 
in any large sense, we mnst take them into 
278 


CHEIST JESUS 


our lives. But wlien God wanted an incarna- 
tion and expression of truth that would em- 
body the fullness of His wisdom and pity, 
and reach to the sublimest thoughts of His 
own heart, He gave us Christ Jesus, The 
Truth Incarnate. Truth is life, but only Life 
complete in all perfection could reach the ut- 
most limits of truth. 

To make great truth operative, influen- 
tial, and vital to the life of the world, God 
not only incarnates it, but plants it over and 
over again from time to time, in some capa- 
cious mind and glowing heart willing to obey 
His voice. For example, take the truth of 
salvation by faith. Jesus had taught it, but 
as early as the times of the primitive Church 
it was necessary for Paul to become its great 
exponent. In Luther’s day it had to be 
planted again by another great apostle of 
light, who through much tribulation had ar- 
rived at the knowledge of this vital, saving 
truth of the gospel. When again it seemed 
as though this truth was being lost sight of, 
God worked it out anew in the religious ex- 
perience of John Wesley. Or take another 
important truth, the witness of the Spirit, 
279 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

There have been times in subsequent history 
when one would think that Pentecost had 
never occurred. Bishop Foss once said there 
were probably not one hundred and fifty men 
in all England in Wesley’s day who would 
dare say they knew their sins forgiven. And 
yet this was a truth that in earlier times had 
inspired men to live, and given them cour- 
age for heroic death. God has kept right on 
working out this truth in life ; nor will He let 
die the certainty that fortifies against every 
attack of doubt and of evil. Truth incar- 
nated in the prophets and sages of all the 
ages, as well as truth never before made 
known, finds perfect expression in Christ. 

Life is ever the open door to the appre- 
hension and interpretation of truth, but in 
the last analysis Christ is the interpretative 
Personality for all truth. We study nature, 
and find that nature is a witness, bearing 
testimony unto God. But we enter the mys- 
teries of nature through the facts of life, and 
through life as a fact. Nature is meaningless 
apart from life that thinks and wills. It 
means nothing for us except through our own 
life, thought, and action. It is only intelli- 
280 


CHRIST JESUS 

gible to our thought when conceived as cre- 
ated and sustained by Infinite Life that 
thinks, wills, and acts. If the universe be re- 
garded as the handiwork and a sphere of the 
present activity of God, we are then far from 
being clear of difficulties. Its vastness star- 
tles and oppresses us, while nature declines 
to make us quite clear on the fundamental 
doctrine of the Divine goodness. Science does 
not help. In fact it so adds to the scope of 
things as to increase our perplexity. Christ 
is supreme over nature, and He illuminates 
the natural world in which we live. ‘^What 
we want is not a vision of the rim of things, 
but of the center of things, and that we get 
at the cross. We discover there that this 
universe is not a soulless mill, grinding us to 
powder, but the threshold of our Father’s 
house. We learn there that creation and 
humanity are related to God in a vital way. 
Above all, and the center of all, is love. 
There is a glory of God of which the stars 
sing, — power, wisdom, beauty; but there is a 
glory of God of which the stars are silent, — 
holiness, love, mercy; and that glory shines 
for us in the face of Jesus Christ.’' The 
281 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

study of nature will yield much information, 
and help in the enlarging and correcting of 
our thoughts, but while the facts and indica- 
tions of nature, rightly understood, are 
always true, they are not The Truth’’ in the 
ultimate sense of a revelation adequate to 
human need. The universe can only be inter- 
preted in terms of life, the life of man and 
the life of God; and each of these in turn 
find their interpretation in the personality of 
Christ, who' revealed ourselves to ourselves, 
on both the earthward and Godward side, in 
respect to duty, salvation, and destiny, and 
who alone was able to say, ‘^He that hath 
seen Me hath seen the Father. ’ ’ 

If we turn to history and study man in 
the moral court of the world, on almost every 
page is a question of which Christ alone is 
the sufficient answer. Back of the Eepublic 
of Plato, the Ethics of Aristotle, the moral 
discussions of the Stoics, and the great mod- 
em philosophies and histories are mighty 
civilizations throbbing with life. Every such 
book is a symbol of the struggle and splendid 
achievement of men, ^ ^ a glass through which 
we can look into the seething soul of the 
282 


CHRIST JESUS 


race, an eminence from which, we can be- 
hold the battle with evil extending over a 
thousand generations.’’ But for the mean- 
ing of it all, we must lift onr gaze from strug- 
gling, imperfect man to man victorious and 
ideal. We must determine, as we read the 
nature of God in the face of Jesus Christ, 
what is that ‘ ‘ one divine far-off event toward 
which the whole creation moves.” Christ 
gives light that maketh clear the meaning 
of life. The race pursues its weary way 
through homage to stock and stone, Moloch 
worship and polytheism, through soul-anni- 
hilating pantheisms, perplexity, self-immola- 
tion, and despair, but there is no light in the 
darkness until we behold the Sun of right- 
eousness, in whom ‘‘dwelleth all the fullness 
of the Godhead bodily.” Jesus, through His 
personality and mission, is the magic key 
that unlocks the mysteries of life. He is 
The Truth that is Life. 

Christ illuminates that ideal world to 
which we aspire, which finds noble expres- 
sion in Art, Music, and Literature. All of 
these rich products of the creative imagina- 
tion abound in truth, but it is the truth of 
283 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

life, reaching up through human imperfec- 
tion after the ideal, determined not to cease 
until touching the garment hem of Him out 
of whom there goeth virtue. The truth of 
art is the truth of life, and its interpretation 
is personal, finding the touchstone for all its 
ideals of truth and beauty in Christ. The 
theory of music is a bald conclusion, and 
though philosophy can explain the song-bird, 
the truth does not take deep hold of us, until 
our life answers in the warbling note to the 
throb of Christ’s life. Literature is the ex- 
pression of life, and finds its truth in the 
Christian interpretation of life. Carlyle de- 
scribed Dante as ‘ ‘ the voice of ten silent cen- 
turies.” ‘^Shakespeare lives his way into 
the life of the centuries, until humanity, past 
and present, lives in his soul ; then, with the 
breath of immortality, he gives us the drama 
of life in action. ’ ’ But if the truth of all of 
these arts is to be found in life, it must be 
in life under the supremacy of the ideal, and 
here the ultimate standard is ever the truth 
as it is in Jesus. 

The Bible too- is truth, giving to the world 
284 


CHRIST JESUS 


God’s greatest revelation. Bnt after all it is 
in itself only the atmosphere, the medinm of 
sight. It transmits and reveals Him, whom 
to know is life eternal. It possesses nnnsnal 
facilities and nniqne power for acquainting 
ns with Christ. Christ and not the Bible is 
the Sun of righteousness, Christ and not the 
Bible is The Truth in its ultimate form and 
expression. Truth is life. The Bible is truth 
* in that it is the transcript of life from the 
meagemess of frail, fallen humanity up to the 
richness and glory of Deity. But the life 
that is human finds its interpretation, and 
the life that is divine its manifestation, only 
in Him who was the incarnation of both the 
human and the Divine. 

All revelations are summed up in Christ. 
The vast storehouses of truth, the immense 
mines of wealth into which we have delved 
in the perusal of nature, human history, art, 
music, literature, and the Bible, are tributes 
to Him whose glory is in all and over all. 
All religious truth, scattered everywhere, 
focuses here. Gather it up from every 
source, but let Christ illuminate it. Truth 
285 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

everywhere owns its Lord, and pays its hom- 
age to Jesus. ‘‘He that cometh from above, 
is,’’ in the realm of truth, “above all.” 

“Thou art the Truth: — Thy word alone 
True wisdom can impart; 

Thou only canst inform the mind, 

And purify the heart. 

“Thou art the Way, the Truth, the Life; 

Grant us that way to know. 

That truth to keep, that life to win, 

[Whose joys eternal flow.” 

Though life is everywhere truth’s most 
vital expression, Christ as The Truth is 
unique in His person. First, He is unique in 
His intellect. Men work and struggle over 
their philosophical systems, or soar with ef- 
fort to the heights of poetic inspiration. The 
wisdom of most sages smells of the lamp. If 
they say fine things it is because you give 
them time to study in their closets. The wis- 
dom of Jesus is unstudied. He says, appar- 
ently inpromptu, the best possible things in 
the best possible way. “Why eateth the 
Master with publicans and sinners?” In- 
stantly the answer comes, “They that be 
286 


CHRIST JESUS 


whole need not a physician, but they that are 
sick.’^ What an apt, happy, spirited, convinc- 
ing reply, and how full of meaning! He is 
always ready, always bright, always original, 
and yet always simple. He is never dull 
nor commonplace, and never taken by sur- 
prise. He never argues, never doubts, 
never speaks with hesitation. He knows, de- 
clares, and is The Truth. Phillips Brooks 
once said: ‘‘Knowledge is no word of Jesus 
at all. Solomon is always talking about 
knowledge. Jesus talks about truth.’’ Paul 
described Jesus as “Christ, the wisdom of 
God.” Genius will not explain the wisdom 
and quality of Christ’s intellect. Genius He 
had of the rarest type, but we must go 
farther back to the high habit of His spir- 
itual life which was ever in the unclouded 
region of truth. Then we must go still 
farther back to the fact that He is The Truth, 
and from Him truth proceeded with perfect 
naturalness. 

Christ as The Truth is unique not only in 
His intellect, but in His whole nature. In 
Him is the infinite fullness of all that God 
is. He puts us into intelligent and loving 
287 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

relation with all the vital facts of God’s 
being, nature, and government. Yon ask for 
propositions, and statements of tmth. I 
give yon my life. Yon ask the way of sal- 
vation. I am the Way. You ask about the 
future. I am the life eternal. I give you 
Myself, and where I am there ye shall be 
also.” You aspire to see God. I am His 
image, seeing Me ye see the Father. You 
long to fathom His mystery, and the depths 
of the divine nature. His deepest mystery 
and His very self proclaim themselves in Me. 
Jesus Christ is ‘‘God manifest in the flesh, 
justified in the spirit, seen of angels, 
preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in 
the world, received up into glory. ’ ’ In Him 
is the complete manifestation and interpre- 
tation of man in all the potentialities of His 
nature. Though in Him there was no sin, 
yet His cross is the eternal symbol of the 
depth and reality of sin, not only in the 
world, but in the Christian consciousness. 
Not only has He sounded the depths of man’s 
nature as a sinner, in His victory over the 
sin that He would not let defile Him, and in 
His tasting death for every man, but He has 
288 


CHEIST JESUS 


incarnated all the potentialities of hnman 
nature when open and responsive on its God- 
ward side. The splendor of His full man- 
hood is forever the measure of a man. 

‘‘But Thee, but Thee, 0 Sovereign Seer of time, 
But Thee, 0 poet’s Poet, wisdom’s tongue. 

But Thee, 0 man’s best Man, 0 love’s best Love, 
0 perfect life in pefect labor writ, 

O all men’s Comrade, Servant, King or Priest, 
"What if or yet, what mole, what flaw, what lapse, 
"What least defect or shadow of defect, 

What rumors tattled by an enemy 
Of influence loose, what lack of grace. 

Even in torture’s grasp, or sleep’s or death’s, — 
O, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, 

Jesus, good Paragon, Thou Crystal Christ?” 

Sidney Lanier. 

If Christ is The Truth, thus unique in 
intellect and nature, there are certain things 
that we may reasonably expect of Him. If 
these things are undisputed and indisputable 
facts, imbedded in the consciousness of en- 
lightened people, they establish His claim to 
be The Truth. 

If Christ is The Truth, we would expect 
Him to be a sufficient revelation of God. As 
the revelation of God, He embodies and ex- 
289 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 


presses mucli elsewhere revealed, throws a 
flood of light upon all this, and goes infinitely 
beyond it, giving all a new setting in love, as 
the essential nature of God. God revealed 
as love, and related to us as Father, gives us 
the needful key for the interpretation of the 
universe, of all phenomena, and of all life. 
Love that puts eternal goodness at the heart 
of things is indispensable to any rational ex- 
planation of the mysteries of existence. Of 
all the qualities of the divine nature revealed 
in Christ, love is supreme. His whole life 
proclaims the fact that ‘‘God is love.’’ His 
death seals it as forever true. 

“0 Love divine, what hast thou done! 

The incarnate God hath died for me 1 
The Father’s co-eternal Son 
Bore all my sins upon the tree! 

The Son of God for me hath died ; 

My Lord, my Love, is crucified.” 

If Christ is The Truth, having taken 
upon Himself our humanity. He surely ought 
to be the revealer of the highest type of hu- 
man life. He is this by common consent. 
Even unbelief bows before His ideal man- 
hood. An exhaustive statement of its ideal 
290 


CHRIST JESUS 


elements is like trying to make a full state- 
ment about the richness of the sun. Nor is 
His ideal to he found in any source outside 
of Himself. It is neither Greek nor Roman 
nor Anglo-Saxon. He stands unique and 
alone, the Universal Man, and the incarna- 
tion of the absolute ideal. All that any man 
ought to be, all that he aspires to be, all 
that he can be, all that he ever will be, and 
more, Christ was and is. 

If Christ is The Truth, He should at least 
be able to point the way whereby God and 
man, estranged through human sin, might 
again get together. Here, too, is the sever- 
est test, for the moral problem, the sin ques- 
tion is the greatest known to the race. Does 
He point the way! Yes; and more. He is 
The Way. He is the great Atonement for the 
sin of the world. He is the Redeemer of 
every type of human failure. The concep- 
tions consequent upon the hypotheses of 
Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, and Spencer, give 
us a philosophy which says ‘ ‘ the fit survive. ’ ^ 
True! by the working of the law the fit and 
only the fit survive. Jesus has demonstrated 
His power to make men fit to survive. He 
291 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

is Life, dynamic and personal, tonching with 
renewing power and sustaining with all-suf- 
ficent grace the soul awakened by His might 
from the death of sin. Wherever He is 
obeyed. He is the Eestorer of lost order, both 
in the individual and in the social life. There 
was a time when Italy was in chains, under 
the domination of the Medici. Then there 
appeared in Florence a monk with the accent 
of Lombardy. He is a herald of righteous- 
ness, and as Savonarola urges upon them 
obedience to Christ, the people hear his voice. 
The power of the Medici is broken, and for 
once the voice of Christ directs, even in the 
civil courts. Out of chaos there comes order, 
and the oppressed emerge from their thral- 
dom. So it has ever been when a Savonarola 
in some ancient Florence or a Charles Park- 
hurst in a modem New York leads the peo- 
ple to Jesus, who is The Truth in righteous 
living. As The Tmth who is The Way 
whereby God and men get back together 
again. He not only atones for sin, making the 
sinner ^s pardon possible in a righteous moral 
court, but He so purifies, ennobles, fortifies 
292 


CHEIST JESUS 


human nature that man can live perpetually 
in the continued and unbroken favor of God. 
Christ is The Truth of life that throbs in 
unison with the heart of God. He is to be 
had by ^^whosoever-wilP’ at the price of 
total self-surrender to The Truth. 

If Christ is The Truth, it is reasonable 
to expect Him to be a teacher capable of giv- 
ing ultimate standards of truth. Christ in 
His life and words is the sure and final 
standard of truth in all spiritual teaching. 
All the standards that the Christian requires 
have been established in the incarnate life 
and teachings of Jesus Christ. He to whom 
the Divine Spirit-life was given without stint 
or measure, assumed the right to speak with 
unquestioned authority ^ ‘ the words of God. ’ ’ 
Our final appeal is to Christ. All other 
writings for which inspiration is claimed, 
and all living presumed to be of merit, is 
judged at last by His standard. Forward, 
and not back, to Christ is the watchw^ord for 
this new century. He is authority, sure and 
unchanging. Not merely as a man, but as 
God, does He speak. ^ ‘ For I have not spoken 
293 


THE QUEST OP TEUTH 

of Myself, but the Father which sent Me, He 
gave me a commandment what I should say 
and what I should speak. 

‘‘Hushed he the noise and the strife of the schools, 
Volume and pamphlet, sermon and speech, 

The lips of the wise and the prattle of fools. 

Let the Son of Man teach ! 

Who has the key of the future but He ? 

Who can unravel the knots in the skein ? 

We have groaned and have travailed and sought 
to be free; 

We have travailed in vain. 

Bewildered, dejected and prone to despair. 

To Him as at first do we turn and beseech ; 

Our ears are all open ! Give heed to our prayers ! 

0, Son of Man, teach!’’ 

From One who is The Truth we would ex- 
pect to receive, not only wise teaching bear- 
ing the tests of ultimate standards of truth, 
but an unequaled spiritual output of the 
heart-life. Again, Christ meets every re- 
quirement. “From the sun, the lord of the 
summer, grain, fruit, and flower gain their 
richness. From the sun the sheaf borrows 
its golden luster, the cluster its purple hue, 
the apple its blushing beauty. The modest 
arbutus and the low-lying snowdrop trace 
294 


CHRIST JESUS 


their delicate loveliness to the morning light, 
while the ruby and the sapphire receive Jrom 
the same source their solid brilliancy.’’ 
In the world of life Christ is the Snn and the 
Light. Everywhere and always ^‘Christ’s 
mighty, majestic heart, glowing and all glo- 
rious, is sowing the world with life, light, and 
joy.” 

In One who is The Truth there ought to 
be heights and depths as yet unexplored and 
forever inexhaustible. Who can mount to 
the summit of Christ’s holiness and glory, 
or put mete and bound to the magnitude of 
either His mind or heart? Walking about 
the foot of a mountain, we enjoy and admire, 
but the majesty and the magnitude of it is 
beyond our comprehension or even our guess. 
So we walk about this Man, whose shoulders 
are under the earth but whose head and heart 
lift us beyond the clouds ; we feel His inspira- 
tion ; we respond to the touch of His love and 
power; we behold in His face the glory of 
God and are transformed into His likeness; 
but with our little minds we can not grasp 
His big thoughts, save only fragments here 
and there; nor can we drop the plummet of 
295 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

human love far enough to sound the depths 
of the heart that broke and bled for us. 
There is a legend which tells us that when 
the giants warred against the gods, they 
took the Mounts Pelius, Ossa, and Olympus, 
and piled them one upon another trying 
thereby to scale the heavens ; hut they could 
not reach. Take, if you will, the best things 
ever thought, said, or done by Isaiah the 
prophetic giant, Paul the apostolic giant, 
Raphael and Angelo the artistic giants, the 
saints of all ages the giants of divine grace, 
cherubim, seraphim, and archangel, the celes- 
tial giants ; pile them one above another until 
they reach unto the heavens, hut Christ is 
higher yet in His unexplored greatness. 
There are whole ranges of His divine man- 
hood that have not quite da,wned upon our 
vision. His nature is a universe that we are 
all the time exploring, only to find it inex- 
haustible. Just as in science each new ad- 
dition to the telescope brings new worlds into 
sight, so with each enlargement of the soul 
there is a widening vision, hut the vision, 
however grand its scope, always has more 
worlds beyond in Jesus Christ. The school- 
296 


CHRIST JESUS 


boy walking home in the dark needs only a 
handful of stars. The scientist grown old in 
reflection and study needs a larger world. 
‘ ^ Christ is a world that grows with our grow- 
ing life.’’ Now we see through a glass 
darkly; by and by we shall no longer know 
in part that radiant One whom at length we 
shall see face to face. 

If Christ is The Truth in the brief span 
of years that we call time, it is at least pre- 
sumable that He is The Ttnith eternally. He 
ought then to carry us to the fulflllment of 
the soul’s immortal hope, and give us authen- 
tic knowledge - about heaven. Though rich 
and precious His utterances, what He has 
said upon the subject seems to some to be 
scarce enough. In our blindness we cling to 
the grossly material and forget the spiritual 
interpretation of life, that takes us to the 
very center of reality, for this and all worlds. 
Christ is Himself the revelation of heaven. 
Its essential nature is not to be found in 
crowns, thrones and robes, golden streets 
and walls of jasper; but in rest, serenity, 
love, and the ministry of service. Christ is 
inca.mate Truth, incarnate God, incarnate 
297 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

heaven. Heaven’s peace, majesty, and bless- 
ing came to onr world and traveled our earth 
with Him. What is heaven I Look at Him! 
He is all that one can desire — holiness, infi- 
nite quiet, repose, satisfaction of mind and 
heart, development, service, victory, and the 
supremacy of immeasurable love. The pres- 
ence and perfection of these things is heaven, 
always and everywhere. Wliat Jesus is, is 
heaven. Where Jesus is, ’tis heaven there. 
‘^Heaven opens before me . . . Christ is 

calling. Do n ’t call me back, ’ ’ were the dying 
words of Moody. Frances Willard, to whom 
Jesus was all and in all, seemed, ere her 
sweet life took its eternal flight, tO' see the 
Savior face to face, and exclaimed with ut- 
most content, ‘ ‘ How beautiful it is to be with 
God!” Christ has brought life and immor- 
tality to light, and in His own dear self He 
places all heaven before our eyes. Well has 
Macaulay said: ‘‘Christianity has not only 
changed the face of Europe and won a 
thousand triumphs, but its crowning glory 
is that it has wiped the tears from eyes that 
had failed with wakefulness and sorrow, lent 
celestial visions to those dwelling under 
298 


CHEIST JESUS 


thatched roofs, and shed victorious tran- 
quillity upon those who have seen the shades 
of death closing around them.” Christ is 
heaven, and to Him death is only a new hori- 
zon on which His sun breaks through all 
clouds and shines forth in untroubled 
splendor. If J esus is supreme in our lives we 
have heaven here and now, if as we pass 
through the valley of the shadow of death 
He shelters us in the tender care of His own 
great heart we take heaven with us, and to 
be with Him forever and forever will still 
continue to he heaven. The eternal heaven 
will be the same as our present heaven in 
its essential qualities, for Christ is ‘ ‘ the same 
yesterday, to-day, and forever,” but in the 
new conditions of spiritual existence we will 
enter with joy into the fullness of Christ, 
and thus into the larger meaning and bliss of 
heaven. 

Finally, if Christ is The Truth we would 
expect Him to win, and it is our right to 
look for evidence of victory. Tinith, though 
crushed to earth, will rise again. Truth will 
not only survive, hut will be ‘‘o’er all vic- 
torious.” From Calvary Christ has vaulted 
299 


THE QUEST OF TEUTH 

to the summit of the universe. To-day 
Christ is Euler over the most remarkable 
empire that has ever existed. Napoleon said 
to one of his officers, ‘‘Can you tell me who 
Jesus Christ wasV’ When the officer an- 
swered “No,’’ Napoleon said, “.Well, then 
I will tell you. ’ ’ Then he proceeded to com- 
pare himself and the heroes of antiquity with 
Christ, showing Christ’s superiority. “I 
think,” he said, “I understand somewhat of 
human nature, and I tell you all these were 
men, and I am a man; but not one is like 
Him; Jesus Christ was more than a man. 
Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself 
founded great empires, but upon what did 
the creation of our genius depend? Upon 
force. J esus alone founded His empire upon 
love, and to this very day millions would die 
for Him.” Even so. The principle of love 
and loyalty to the King is enthroned in the 
hearts and rules in the lives of Christ’s men. 
Christ is a personal dynamic in human na- 
ture, giving impulse and power to a heroism 
of service, surpassing the heroism of states- 
man and warrior. What means that beauti- 
ful young life, so full of promise, buried in 
300 


CHRIST JESUS 


yonder far-away mission field or in the foul- 
ness of the city slum ? What means the self- 
denial that prompts the rich young woman 
to give herself for others? What means the 
career of the young man who turns aside 
from rosy business prospects and wealth, to 
the ministry, offering at most a bare living? 
It is love and loyalty to the King. 

Dr. Newhouse, in his dying words, left us 
both question and answer: ‘‘Who then is 
worthy to march at the head of all time? 
The Lord Jesus Christ; He is worthy.^’ 
The ma,rvel of the ages is the waxing fame 
of Jesus, the inca.mate Truth. “The time is 
rapidly approaching when society will have 
but one Hero and King, at whose feet human- 
ity will empty all its songs and flowers, its 
prayers and tears. In the triumphal proces- 
sion of the Roman conqueror, kings and 
princes walked as captives in the emperor’s 
train. So have great men and the multi- 
tudes of the common folk joined Christ’s 
triumphal procession.” Listen to Carlyle: 
“The tidings of the most important event 
ever transacted in this world is the life and 
death of the Divine Man in Judea, at once 
301 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

the symptom and cause of innumerable 
changes to all people in the world.’’ John 
Euskin, occupying a foremost place among 
the English prose writers of the last two 
centuries, says his life has been dedicated to 
‘‘an interpretation of the truth and beauty 
of Jesus Christ. ” Matthew Arnold declares : 
“Christ came to reveal what righteousness 
really is. For nothing will do except right- 
eousness, and no conception of righteousness 
will do except Christ’s conception of it.” 
Martineau, the most successful defender of 
theism in his century, makes this significant 
utterance : ‘ ‘ The world has changed, and that 
change is historically traceable to Christ. 
He is the Regenerator of the human race.” 
Gladstone, “in his old age a figure sublime 
upon our earth,” dedicates his closing years 
to a study of the teachings of Christ, whom 
he calls “The constant Guide, the everlast- 
ing Priest and King.” “His laurel leaves 
won in the forum of statesman, leader, and 
orator would soon fade, and he desired to 
weave a wreath for Him whose name is 
secure and shines like a star.” Shake- 
speare, Tennyson, Browning, Lowell, Long- 
302 


CHEIST JESUS 


fellow, Whittier, and all the long list of im- 
mortal poets pay the homage of their 
genius unto Him. 

‘‘Thou seemest human and divine; 

The highest, holiest manhood Thou ; 

Our wills are ours, we know not how. 

Our wills are ours to make them Thine. ' ’ 

We hear Eousseau saying, “Yes, if the death 
of Socrates be that of a sage, the life and 
death of Jesus are those of a God.’^ We 
listen to Jean Paul Eichter, who speaks of 
our Christ as “the holiest among the 
mighty, and the mightiest among the holy, 
who lifted with His pierced hands empires 
off their hinges, turned the stream of the 
centuries out of its channel, and still governs 
the ages.’’ So Christ has gone on from vic- 
tory to victory, until the few score disciples 
of apostolic days have become a vast multi- 
tude, numbering, God only knows, perhaps 
half a billion souls. We see now the certain 
truth which only a prophet could see of yore, 
“He shall see of the travail of His soul and 
be satisfied.” 

Come with me, and let us tarry here before 
303 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

Him, for His presence is the perfect truth 
that is fullness of life. But, 0 God, it is 
light here! 0 Thou Majestic Christ, Thou 
art truth’s essence! We glean the truth 
planted in the life of all the ages, and with 
our little candle light we stand before Thee; 
hut Lord of truth, it is so light here! We 
glory in nature, human history, art, music, 
literature, the Bible, but we turn unfilled to 
Thee, the Living Bread, the Incarnate Truth. 
In Thy light we see light that illuminates 
all these. 0 Christ, The Truth, Thou art 
the Key to them all ! We pause to look into 
Thy face, and it is very light here! We 
have tried, our Father, to think Thy thoughts 
after Thee, and to penetrate the secrets of 
Thy mysterious nature. The quest was too 
high, we could not attain unto it. We have 
tried to know man and truth and immor- 
tality, but they were too deep, and we have 
groped helplessly in the dark. 0 Christ, 
Thou Incarnate God, our dreams’ best Man; 
Thou, the way back to the Father; Teacher 
of ultima tes in thought and life; Thou from 
whose heart there cometh every good thing; 
whose riches we never exhaust; Thou who 
304 


CHEIST JESUS 


art Heaven, King and Master of human 
hearts, take np Thine abode with ns, for 
it is so very light here in Thy presence! 
Christ, the Living Truth, ‘‘We praise Thee, 
we bless Thee, we worship Thee, we glorify 
Thee, we give thanks to Thee for Thy great 
glory, Thy truth. Thyself! 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Christ of To-day. — Gordon, 

The Christ of To-day, What? Whence? Wither? — 
Morgan. 

In the School of Christ. — McDowell. 

The Essence of Religion. — Bowne. 

The Miraculous Element in the Gospels. — Bruce. 
The Influence of Christ in Modern Life. — HilUs. 
The Master of the Science of Right Living. — Hillis. 
Christ in the Centuries. — Fairhairn. 

The Place of Christ in Modern Theology. — Fair- 
bairn. 

The Meaning of Life. — Cook. 

The Life-Giving Spirit. — Cook. 

The Compulsion of Love. — Anderson. 

The Higher Ritualism. — Hughes. 

Religious Certainties. — Foss. 

The Royalty of Jesus. — Luccock. 

The Changeless Christ. — Forbes. 

The Assurance of Faith. — Guth. 

305 


20 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 

Through Christ to God. — Beet. 

Christian Focus. — McConnell. 

Visions of the Christ. — Gilbert. 

The Death of Christ. — Denney. 

The Christianity of Jesus Christ. — Pearse. 

Christ and Man. — Dods. 

The Gospel for an Age of Doubt. — Van Dyke. 

The Gospel for a World of Sin. — Van Dyke. 

The Unchanging Christ. — McClaren. 

Jesus Exultant. — Steele. 

The Manliness of Christ. — Hughes. 

The Witness of the Heart to Christ. — Carpenter. 
The Man of Galilee. — Wendling. 

The Empire of Love. — Dawson. 

Jesus the World Teacher. — McGee. 

The Final Faith. — Mackenzie. 


306 










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